


Strange

by decaf_kitty



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate History, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Demons, M/M, Mildly Dubious Consent, Vampires, Werewolves, Witches, Youkai
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-30
Updated: 2019-08-22
Packaged: 2019-10-19 11:59:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 20
Words: 72,451
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17600960
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/decaf_kitty/pseuds/decaf_kitty
Summary: Iruka Umino is a lone werewolf without a pack; he spends most of his time working downtown cleaning hotel rooms and taking care of Naruto, a youkai fox.But he's recently started to notice a soft strange scent in the city, and he wants to know its source.After hunting it down, Iruka finds a silver-haired man with a scar on his face, and he unpredictably loses himself in lust.{Note: On hiatus until Fall/Winter 2019.}





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MagnusTesla](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MagnusTesla/gifts).



> At MagnusTesla's request, and it's a gift for them, too.
> 
> May everyone enjoy.
> 
>  
> 
> _____

There was a soft scent lingering throughout the city that made his heart ache.

Iruka twisted his hands on the railing again, surveying everything he could from the top-story hotel room balcony. He could tell, deep inside him, that he was coming up on a particularly bad full moon. But, somehow, that wasn’t the real worry: it was whatever strange thing was happening _with the scent_. He transformed willingly most months and rarely had to do anything more than chase stray dogs out of his neighborhood to feel satisfied. 

But… he could sense this time was different. 

Turning back inside the hotel room, Iruka went about the usual procedures for routine cleaning. He had already stripped the bed and gathered the wet, dirty hotel towels as soon as he came in. As his mind rolled over the strange scent, he worked automatically, wiping clean all the surfaces and taking meticulous care of the bathroom. Iruka was glad, as always, for his second shift job and the oddly flexible hours of his schedule. He wasn’t sure if he would ever go back to teaching unfortunately, but this would do for now. 

Especially since Naruto needed him now.

Iruka went about the rest of the shift in a busy contemplative daze. He tried recalling other scents and kept coming back to Naruto’s overwhelmingly strong youkai scent. It had drawn him clear across the city to find a dirty-faced boy alone on a public playground. Naruto had been blissfully unaware that he was emanating anything at all. Only when the pair of them had run into several rather nasty other youkai had the discovery been made: Naruto Uzumaki, orphaned twelve-year-old boy, blonde hair, blue eyes, was actually a kumiho, a nine-tailed fox. 

Naruto’s parents were both dead and the full extent of his powers were unknown to him, but that was Iruka’s story, too. Iruka continued to feel an instinctive bond with the boy, even though Naruto could be damnably irritating and for some reason only wanted to eat ramen for the first full year of their life together. Iruka had only just managed to diversify his diet, even though he himself was a terrible cook. He’d also gotten Naruto properly enrolled in school and was tutoring him with unashamed joy. Sometimes, of course, Iruka felt like screaming in frustration so much that it turned into howling – and that’s when he thought about how different life might be if he was a part of a pack and had literally any sort of support network whatsoever.

Besides Naruto, he had no one, but there was no need to mope about it.

Iruka would have liked to ask someone else what this new scent was – the one that made him feel like he should both run away from it and also track it down and shake it until it fell apart. Of course he knew there were other werewolves in the city, but he always painstakingly avoided them even before he’d taken Naruto in. Now that he was caring for the young youkai, Iruka was taking no chances: for the first time in his life, he’d started being aggressive when confronted as a wolf. He’d even begun to threaten werewolves in person when they met in the street. Most were merely curious about his existence on the edge of the city – they could smell him going downtown to the hotel and then back to his dismally small fourth-story apartment – but Iruka had put more than a few wolves in their place who were far too interested in Naruto and if either of them were available as a midnight snack.

Sitting on the bus, slumped back in the seat, Iruka knew he looked normal to the people around him, even with his unusual facial scar. He barely remembered getting it as a child, before his parents died, but life was hard, and plenty of people had peculiar scars. He glanced at his image in the bus window: his slicked-back brown hair was disheveled from work, and his dark eyes looked truly tired. Iruka scratched at the long scar through his cheeks, wondering if Naruto would be fine tonight when he left to become a wolf once more…

He didn’t have to worry: Naruto was utterly enthused when Iruka got home, loudly shouting at the top of his lungs that he had been invited to a classmate’s house to spend the night. He was nearly bursting into tears for fear that Iruka would say no – and honestly Iruka almost did say no, feeling pin-pricks of concern about not knowing who this Sasuke Uchiha was – but the timing was too perfect, and Naruto was genuinely excited, and Iruka relented, making sure to pack him a spare dry ramen before sending his – well – his son away to another boy’s house.

Alone with himself, and with no other tasks to complete, Iruka found himself twitchy and restless. He normally waited a few more hours before turning wolf, preferring to transform after midnight and giving himself only six or so hours before dawn, but _that damn scent_ … 

He was a wolf before he knew it. 

The fine white full moon beckoned him, and Iruka relished the sensation of cool weather on his dense fur. He’d seen himself in storefront windows, subway glass, and shallow puddles before: he was all dark thick brown fur, more like a timber wolf than the gray wolves that seemed to frequent the city with their white, grey, and black colors. His facial scar transferred over, too; the mark retched across his muzzle like a human had whipped a thin blade across his skull. Ultimately, he was bigger and stockier than other werewolves, but he wasn’t as skilled at fighting, having never been a part of a real pack who would teach him such things.

But what Iruka lacked in finesse, he made up in street smarts.

Tonight, he was intent on finding the source of the strange scent, but it was a full moon, and the city was filled with all sorts of wolves on the prowl. Most went after each other, seeking out new and old mates, establishing and re-establishing territories. Some attacked humans, shifting out of wolf form to ambush, rob, rape, claw, bite, murder. A few – such as Iruka – had very little interactions with wolf or human during the full moon, using the brief bit of time where his instincts took over to better study the city that he lived in.

Iruka ignored the big white wolf that was stalking him through the edge of town as he made his way into the center near the hotel. He didn’t know this wolf – the creature was overly scarred and far too silent for Iruka’s comfort – but he didn’t want to know him, either. Instead, Iruka purposefully lost the other werewolf as he ran through the alleyways, having perfected his knowledge of the streets long ago. 

He didn’t want a fight, not tonight. 

He wanted to fight the scent – no… – no, he wanted _to find_ the scent.

Iruka shook his head. His nose was directing him to one single spot, which he was so unbearably relieved about, but he could feel his wolf brain turning into mush far sooner than he wanted. 

On full moons, he almost always lost himself by the end of the night. He had been disgusted when he first came to the city and realized that he’d eaten rats and pigeons – but then Iruka had gathered that other werewolves ate people’s pets and sometimes people, so he just threw away chewed-up rat carcasses and tossed the pigeon feathers out the window. He’d never gotten so out of control as to assault a human, but he had fought other werewolves before. He tended to win his battles, but he also ended up bloody and sore and calling in sick to work, too, so he stubbornly avoided other wolves during the full moon.

He wasn’t sure why he was already losing himself this early in the night. 

He’d even transformed earlier than normal!

All of a sudden, Iruka went perfectly still and stared up at a specific balcony in a brownstone apartment building. He… he could smell the scent, _really smell it_ , and it was coming from _there_. He was trying to piece together what he wanted to do about the information, but… but all he could think about was getting up to the balcony and finding the person who was so very strange-smelling. 

Before he understood what had happened, Iruka was standing nude on the damn balcony.

He stared back down at the ground, flabbergasted. 

But he didn’t gawk for long! Instead Iruka forced himself back into being a wolf, feeling hot and stupid for making such an irrational decision to – to climb a fucking wall? How had he even done that? Had he done that naked??

He turned towards the balcony door – and realized with a start that it was open.

Iruka padded inside on instinct. His ears were pricked, he was careful with each step. He knew enough about invading human spaces to know that very, very few of them liked when full grown wolves entered their apartments. He certainly didn’t like it when a particularly quarrelsome werewolf had tried to make a statement by coming into his own space: Iruka still daily glowered at the blood stains on his kitchen cabinets that he couldn’t get out. 

He wasn’t about to lose even an ounce of blood in this apartment; in fact, he promised that he wasn’t going to lose himself at all.

But… but then…

Iruka went still all over. He could hear the person finishing a shower. The entire studio apartment was swamped with sweet-smelling steam, dampening Iruka’s fur with its heaviness. The scent itself was still as strong – no, it was even stronger – now that Iruka was clearly within only a few feet of the person.

_He felt strange._

He wasn’t sure if he wanted to kill the person. He didn’t feel like how he did when he was fighting other wolves – even the dumb brute who had burst into his apartment last year. He had never felt any desire to tear apart humans, and he had never done so in his life.

So this – this was _something else._

And it worsened infinitely when the person stepped out in front of Iruka.

He was fully nude, fresh from the shower. He was forcefully drying his pure silver hair, his whole lithe body on display. His skin was moonlight-white… and impossibly unscarred, unbruised, unblemished, unmarked. He was clearly a he: his flaccid sex and silver pubic hair attracted Iruka’s full attention with startling intensity. He was taller than Iruka, and fifty pounds lighter, and was full of lean supple muscle, looking like he could either be a competitive dancer or a professional runner.

_And Iruka wanted to devour him, he wanted to mark every inch of him._

The man suddenly looked up, and then they met eyes.

Well, they almost met eyes: the man had his left eye firmly closed. A fine featherlight scar slid down the left side of his face, from his forehead down towards the corner of his lip. He looked like he was permanently winking or wincing, but his right eye was black-colored and open wide as he took in the very large timber wolf standing on four paws in his kitchen.

But Iruka wasn’t thinking anymore. He moved on instinct, he was abruptly across the room, he was pushing the man down on the ground. He had knocked the towel aside, his nose was shoved against the man’s throat, he was breathing it in, all of it, all of him. 

It _was_ him! The soft sweet sad scent – _it was him!_

He was suddenly not in his wolf form, no longer scratching crimson claw marks down the man’s painfully white skin. Iruka was instead holding the other man down, he was kissing the man’s throat, he was licking it, too. His grip on the man’s forearms was ruthless, uncaring, forceful: he held the man’s arms over his mess of half-dried silver hair. They were both nude, so very nude, and he was hard hard hard. He was panting into the man’s neck before he suddenly, violently couldn’t stop himself, and he bit down on the pretty soft white flesh there, eliciting the loveliest keening sound from the man underneath him. 

Iruka moved his mouth just as he moved his hands. He kissed the other man’s mouth, at first clumsily, unthinkingly, but then he remembered some distant skill, and he was doing his damn best to learn everything about the man’s lips. He didn’t part them with his tongue, instead the man did that, opening himself up for Iruka, and then Iruka was eagerly licking into the man’s mouth, touching his tongue, panting panting panting.

His hands went to the man’s cock and his as well. There was enough residual water from the man’s shower that Iruka used it to ease their cocks together in one hand, and he was soon stroking them both together with delirious zeal. His arousal had been so great that he was weeping pre-cum, which only made the movement easier, sweeter. 

Underneath him, the man shifted his hips suddenly, joining in the motion, and Iruka tore his mouth from the other man’s to stare down at him for a single senseless second.

The man was so wildly flushed, his entire pale face had gone pink. 

It was delicious, delightful.

Iruka glanced at the long scar down the man’s left eye, which he was still amazingly keeping shut, and he found himself licking its very end with incredible obsessive want.

The man moaned underneath him.

Iruka felt his body doing that perfect shudder that signaled he was close, close, close. He stopped licking the man’s scar to force his face under the man’s left ear, where he breathed in as much as he could the wonderful scent that had dragged him here so blindly, mindlessly. His hand shook uncontrollably, then his hips did too, then his whole body, and he came with a wordless gasp against the man’s sweet wet skin.

He couldn’t really parse though his actions, but suddenly he was down between the man’s legs, and his mouth was on the man’s very wonderfully large erect cock. Iruka’s eyes rolled to the back of his head as the whole hard thing went past his lips, pressed down his tongue, pushed at the back of his throat. Iruka grasped roughly at the man’s hips, he was forcing the man’s cock into him more, more, more. He heard sounds – and he realized he was making some of them, but not at all of them – the man was moaning again, loudly, heavily. He moved the man’s cock out of his mouth, and he was harshly breathing as he begged desperately, “Please come, please, please, please…”

Then the man’s slender hand shoved Iruka’s head back down, and Iruka was so very thrilled to take the man’s cock back past his kiss-bruised lips, and he was rewarded beautifully by the man’s cum filling his mouth, dripping out, slipping down the outside of his throat.

He sat back, stumbled backwards. 

Iruka finally caught full sight of the other man – and his breath disappeared from his lungs.

The unbearably soft-smelling man had propped himself up on his elbows. He was still only one-eyed, keeping the other scarred eye closed, as he stared in thrown astonishment at Iruka. His silver hair was thoroughly messed up, scrubbed against the carpet, some of it still soaking wet and other parts dry to the point of fluffiness. The man’s whole body was painted a faint pink from the flush of arousal, most of it concentrating on his finely featured cheeks. He had thin red claw marks from Iruka’s wolf paws on his shoulders and chest that stood out fearfully on his moonlight-white skin. The man’s cock was limp, spent against his quivering thigh; his muscular abdomen was streaked with Iruka’s own white cum.

Iruka stood suddenly, still staring at the man.

And then he changed back into a wolf and flung himself out the apartment, off the balcony, and onto the street below.

The impact was bad, he could feel it as soon as his front two paws hit the asphalt. He fumbled further, his muzzle smashing against the street, his sensitive scar getting pulled as he slid a few feet against the pavement. He struggled to stand on four paws, but he finally made it, and then he was running down the street, turning sharply into an alleyway, all without looking back at the man’s apartment.

The rest of the night passed in a wild, wicked blur. He scratched down another wolf’s face at some point, held her down, had his teeth on her throat, but then he realized what he was doing and dropped her and ran again. He saw a human couple kissing in a side street, and he scared them terribly, and he was hurt when the man stepped in front of the woman to defend her _from him, from Iruka_ , and Iruka went home, desperate to be home, he wanted to be home again.

He slept at the end of his own bed as a wolf, taking up the majority of the lower part of the mattress, his wet dense fur shedding on his bedsheets. 

When he woke up the next morning, Iruka had an _unbelievable_ headache, and he spent more than a few minutes dry-heaving into the toilet. He mechanically went about cleaning his bedsheets, sweeping up wolf hair, throwing away a flower vase that he’d broken while fighting to get into the apartment through his bedroom window. He was desperate not to look in a mirror or catch his reflection on anything: he was terrified what he would see there. 

_He’d attacked a man last night. He’d found the source of the confusing but amazing scent – and he’d assaulted him. He’d broken into the man’s house – and then he’d – he’d -_

Iruka slumped down in his kitchen, dropping the dust pan, slapping both hands over his scarred face, groaning to himself. 

And then he realized he could smell the man… _on his own skin_.

So, naturally, he passed out on the kitchen floor.


	2. Chapter 2

The scent was persistent all morning, it was calling to him, it was making him mad.

Iruka botched cleaning one of the best rooms in the hotel by spilling bleach on the carpet, which sent him into a downward spiral that lasted the next several hours. He was sweating like he’d run a marathon. He knew he was flushed red because the other custodians and maids kept teasingly telling him about it. He waved off their sly comments while inwardly cringing to himself. 

Fortunately Naruto had gone from his new friend Sasuke’s house straight to school, so he hadn’t been witness to the frantic abrupt awakening that Iruka experienced in the kitchen. He had somehow managed in his panicked flailing to knock over a dirty glass Naruto had left by the sink and then had to avoid cutting himself while cleaning it up. He had felt so very stupid by the time he went to work that even his usual motivational messages to himself - work will be better! I’ll get my life in order! today will be good, just wait and see! - went literally nowhere and inspired nothing within him at all.

On his break, Iruka didn’t venture down to gossip with the other staff. Instead he went to the rooftop, pushing open the heavy door and finding the high chain fence around the side of the building. He hadn’t been employed at the hotel when they’d put in the fence, but the rumor was a suicidal guest had taken advantage of the employee-only rooftop and taken the plunge off the building, leading to terrible press for the business. Iruka didn’t know if it was true or not, but, as he pressed his heated scarred face against the cold metal, he felt relieved the fence was there to support him during his sudden crisis.

He was bewildered by what he had done.

Sometimes, Iruka could see snatches of last night: his fingers sliding against spotless pale skin, his tongue lapping against the man’s bare throat, his calloused hand stroking both of them.

It made him blush like crazy.

He had been with men before – and women, too – but he had never in his life had such a wild one-time encounter. Iruka prided himself on being good to his partners, making sure they were satisfied before he got his. He could not recognize the version of himself that pounced on the strange man with an even stranger scent in the man’s own studio apartment, without knowing him, without asking anything about him, without asking if he wanted to even touch Iruka let alone do everything that they had done together. Iruka had been filled with such embarrassment that he’d run away from the scene of his crime without saying a single word to the man except – 

Except begging the other man to come in his mouth!

Iruka squeezed his eyes shut, deeply pained by what he had done. He hadn’t felt any sort of arousal as a wolf before, and he certainly had never pursued anyone, human or werewolf, during a full moon. But last night not only had he hunted down the source of the fascinating scent – he had tackled the man to the ground, forcibly licked him and kissed him, got both of them off with his hand and mouth – _and then he had run away like a coward!_

Sighing to himself, Iruka turned around, putting his back against the high chain fence. He brought his forearm across his aching eyes and burning face. He knew he would have to go back to work soon. Worse, he would have to swallow down his shame when he saw Naruto tonight and act like nothing strange had happened…

He would have to be particularly cautious tonight, the night after the full moon, when his heart, loins, skin, brain were all still overstimulated and demanding increased activity from him.

Iruka was about to push off the fence when something flickered by the rooftop door. 

His wolf senses sung in concern. He shifted instantly into a defensive stance. He could feel his body wanting to transform to fight whatever was on the roof with him. But Iruka held himself in check and instead stared hard at the silvery shimmer of air by the door.

The gleaming grey-white vision coalesced into a familiar silver-haired figure.

Tension flew through Iruka as he recognized the man from last night… except now the man was standing on the rooftop, completely clothed and looking strikingly indifferent to his surroundings. The man was wearing a long black wool coat that, even from twenty feet away, Iruka could identify as a high-end piece of clothing. His jeans were tight and dark blue, his elegant black shoes were perfectly shined. Iruka couldn’t see his hands, because the man had shoved them deep down in his coat pockets, but he wouldn’t have been surprised if he was wearing fine black leather gloves considering the quality of the rest of his attire. 

The man’s silver hair was in much better shape in the daytime. He apparently swept it up and off to the side, seemingly not holding it together with any product as the wind tousled it as naturally and easily. He had his head tilted far off to the side while staring at Iruka. His scarred left eye was still firmly closed, leaving his right black eye alone to do the work of observation.

Iruka had no idea what he should say… including how to ask how the man had just suddenly materialized on the hotel rooftop out of thin air. He knew quite well werewolves couldn’t do that, and neither could youkai, something he’d learned from his hours of research after adopting Naruto into his home and heart.

Yet the man hadn’t been there a second ago – and now he definitely was.

Most torturously, however, the man’s expression was so totally blank that Iruka started to think Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa was being flamboyant and tawdry in her small subtle smile. It was truly disturbing how the man had schooled his features into revealing nothing at all. His eternal wink-wince with his left eye should have altered his face some, but it really didn’t change a thing. However, the man didn’t actually seem all that calm; rather, he was only pretending to be unbothered while standing on the hotel rooftop across from Iruka.

Iruka stayed still and silent, like any good wolf when confronted by an unknown threat.

The man, however, was not a wolf: after a few seconds, he slunk forward towards Iruka with impossible grace, speed, and ease. As he moved, he kept his hands in his pockets and his body loose, but his right eye was focused far too strongly on Iruka as he closed the space between them.

“So,” the man began in a slow thoughtful way that also sounded truly sinister, causing Iruka’s eyes widen in surprise. “I finally move to the big city, learn that there’s werewolves everywhere, but I think to myself, surely none of them will be so stupid to cause me trouble.”

Iruka found that he was pushing himself backwards against the fence, his hands gripping the chain. The silver-haired man in his fine black coat was still walking forward, coming much closer than what was comfortable. He kept his head tilted off to the side, staring at Iruka with his relentless single-eyed gaze. 

“But then you,” he continued, emphasizing 'you' with particular force, “waltz into my home _as a wolf_ and attack me.” 

The man stopped within only inches of Iruka. The wool of his coat was so close that Iruka could see the soft short fuzz of the material. His silver hair was unbelievably fine, his skin was nearly bone-white pale. His shirt collar was high on his neck, so Iruka couldn’t see where he’d bitten the man, but he knew it was there along with his claw marks. Iruka was breathing steadily through his nose so he wouldn’t pass out again, but he definitely wanted to do so, if only to get out of this tense terrifying situation.

He flinched when the man’s gloved right hand flew out from his coat pocket and landed beside Iruka’s head, audibly clenching down on the chain. “What was the purpose behind that?” the man wondered, his tone dark as a moonless night. His black eye was locked on Iruka’s face. 

“Was it an initiation ritual so you could join a pack? Was it a dare?” he asked, sounding cold and curious at the same time. 

Iruka stiffened as the man leaned forward and disconcertingly neared Iruka’s bare neck, as his uniform shirt was slightly open since he kept overheating at work. The man’s breath was strangely cool against Iruka’s hot skin as he cruelly insisted in his interrogation. 

“Do you want to die but you’re too scared to take your own life?” Iruka shivered as the man’s lips softly brushed his throat. He murmured lowly, “If that’s the case, I can help you.”

“I…” Iruka tried to speak, but his voice failed him so badly that he couldn’t utter anything else. He was flushed across his scarred cheeks, he was shaking against the fence. He was clearly missing an integral element to the other man’s identity. He couldn’t believe that he had done something so horrible and bold to… with… this same person just the night before.

The man pulled back his head to examine Iruka better. His right black eye had become troubled. His silver eyebrows narrowed as he observed Iruka’s flustered expression. He made no sound, but Iruka could feel tension forming within the other man. Iruka’s own dark eyes were wide and worried, and he tried to express his apology silently by looking pitiful and repentant.

Then the man straightened his head and opened his scarred left eye.

Iruka went immediately faint. The other man’s hands caught his biceps hard and forced him back and upwards against the fence, holding him in place and off the ground. 

The man’s left eye was red, it was scarlet, it was crimson, _it was blood_.

As Iruka stared at the newly revealed wonder, he realized an infinite number of tiny black sparkles were swirling in the bloody red of the man’s eye. The dark spots were distracting, fascinating as they whirled and floated and swam through the bright color. Iruka felt so engrossed that he could barely hear the man asking him an important question, but in some far-off distant way, he did hear the words, because he answered them thoughtlessly.

“No, I didn’t know you were a vampire.”

The man’s gloved hands on his arms tightened. He was asking another question, but Iruka was growing dizzy, his face was heating up, his mouth was becoming so _so_ dry… 

Iruka replied unthinkingly, “Because I like your scent.”

He registered that the man had shaken his head because his beautiful red-and-black eye moved out of Iruka’s possessed gaze, and then the man closed his left eye, and Iruka was slumping down the fence to sit on the cement, his brain trying to piece itself back together. His own hands were suddenly on his face, rubbing at his scar and his eyes, forcing feeling back into his skin and spirit. When he looked back up at the other man, he found the silver-haired stranger considering him with a frosty one-eyed gaze and his hands back down in his coat pockets. 

“You’ve never had a pack, have you?” the man correctly judged. He sounded like he was contemplating out a variety of options, many of which included maiming and murdering Iruka.

“No,” Iruka answered quietly, almost under his breath. He felt like he could just barely remember the man’s question – and he could have sworn it was something like - _Did you really not know I was a vampire?_ \- but that was a crazy question – of course Iruka didn’t know – because he’d never –

His mouth dropped open as he stared up at the strange man. “You’re a vampire?” Iruka asked, far too sharp and loud. 

Even though he was in his late twenties, he had never met a vampire before now; they were bordering on extinction, and he’d honestly never imagined he would encounter one. His parents had lectured him about vampires when he was a child the same way that human children were told about werewolves: vampires are rare creatures of the darkness and night, they can and will kill you for the fun of it, you must always be careful with them and never let your guard down. 

Iruka could vaguely recall his mother showing him an elaborate sketch of an excessively scary vampire and her directing Iruka’s childishly wandering attention to the figure’s fangs. She had said, slowly and deliberately, that vampires and werewolves did _not_ get along, they were mortal enemies, and, that while vampires did not like drinking werewolf blood, they would do so, especially to kill a wolf.

Iruka’s hand jumped to his throat where the strange man had just put his lips.

Oh, God, the man had been threatening Iruka. He was saying that he would kill him.

Iruka’s eyes were still fixed on the other man as he realized _that last night he had tackled a vampire to the floor of his own apartment and then kissed him and jerked him off and sucked his cock and – and – and then he had just run the fuck away!_

The silver-haired man watched without comment as a thousand different emotions and thoughts rushed over Iruka’s face. Finally his lips slipped into a sarcastic smile. “You’ve never smelled a vampire before,” he remarked in amusement. “So, instead of staying away from the strange scent, you ran towards it.”

Iruka blushed. He felt stupid, he _was_ stupid. He had been conflicted about the scent the entire time, but he hadn’t considered that it was his primal instinct warning him that it was a predator, a threat, an enemy to avoid at all costs. Instead, Iruka had gone after it, hunted it down, found where it lived. He felt overwhelmed as he stared up at the man, who was smiling at him in the cruel sort of way that feral cats did while toying with their prey.

And then the man was crouched down over him and pushed Iruka’s back against the fence. Sitting on the cement of the rooftop, Iruka found he could barely move an inch. He tried to remain still under the heavy oppressive aura of the other man, but his body was shaking slightly. His brain was finally recognizing the scent for what it actually was – a sign to stay away – a warning that death is waiting nearby.

“Tell me your name,” the man ordered as one of his gloved hands easily unbuttoned and unzipped Iruka’s black trousers. He wasn’t using his sparkling red-and-black eye on him, but Iruka felt compelled to answer anyway.

Staring at the other man’s pale scarred face only inches from his own, his voice wavered as he replied, “It’s Iruka Umino.”

“Kakashi Hatake,” the man said instantly in response. He adjusted Iruka’s hips with effortless but disturbing strength so he could pull down Iruka’s pants to his knees. It took a few seconds for Iruka to realize that was his name – that was the man’s name – his name was Kakashi Hatake.

As Kakashi’s gloved fingers ran the length of Iruka’s boxer-clad thigh, he leaned forward and breathed against Iruka’s bare neck, “You can tell me something that no one else can.” Iruka shuddered as Kakashi delicately nosed his jugular vein, pushing up Iruka’s head against the fence. “You can tell me what vampires smell like, what I smell like. You don’t have any prejudice clouding your judgment, so you can describe the scent without bias.” 

Iruka’s hands curled into fists on the cement. He squeezed his eyes shut as Kakashi suddenly stroked his cock through his boxers, swiftly inspiring arousal with a simple touch. He wondered what he should do – stay stationary, endure whatever happened next, hope the man would leave him alone – or should he turn wolf, fight back, go for Kakashi’s throat, even though he knew in his heart that vampires were stronger and quicker? Iruka’s brain was unable to help him, instead relishing Kakashi’s extremely skilled hands caressing Iruka’s arousal.

“You smell strange,” Iruka finally confessed. His blush was drowning him alive. His skin was tearing against the cement as he dragged his hands backwards across the rooftop. 

Kakashi murmured, “Oh?” with his lips pressed against the slope of Iruka’s neck.

“It’s soft,” Iruka choked out, lifting up his chin, irrationally giving Kakashi more access. He felt his eyelids flutter as the other man kissed Iruka’s pulsing vein with gentle force. “Like that, how you just…”

“Hmmm.” 

Both of Kakashi’s hands suddenly were on Iruka’s shoulders, and then Iruka was flat on the cement, looking up at the other man, his silver hair, his black eye. Above him and around him was the vast baby blue sky and white clouds drifting by, but Iruka found himself concentrating solely on Kakashi, whose face had changed from indifference to… to something else.

Then the man freed Iruka’s cock from his boxers, and his hand lost his glove, and his palm was smooth and soft against Iruka’s aching arousal. Shame poured over Iruka as he involuntarily pushed his hips up into the man’s grip. He looked away from Kakashi, desperately embarrassed but terribly aroused, and he could only just hear the man’s near-soundless question, “What else?”

Iruka couldn’t answer him. His face burned, his body was trembling. He could feel himself getting harder from Kakashi’s exquisite touch, it made his head swim and spin and float away.

Kakashi’s cool breath was suddenly against his right ear. “Tell me what else, Iruka Umino.”

Before he knew what he was doing, Iruka’s hands had grabbed both of the other man’s shoulders, his fingers digging down into the solid wool of Kakashi’s coat. He jerked the man down to him, forcing their bodies further together. He spoke harshly into Kakashi’s sweet-smelling silver hair on desperate impulse, “Your scent is _lonely_. It was _calling_ to me. It’s _still_ calling to me.”

Then he dropped away from Kakashi and closed his eyes. 

The other man stayed surreally motionless for a moment – before he tightened his grip on Iruka’s arousal and pushed up Iruka’s uniform shirt with the other, exposing his scarred abdomen to the cool air. He was suddenly kissing there, across all of Iruka’s fine muscles and the scars from his wolf form that had transferred over to his human body. Kakashi was obscenely good at stroking him, tight and ceaseless but gentle and caring, meaning each and every movement. Along with the sudden combined stimulation of sweet soft lips on his stomach, Iruka soon fell completely apart. He came with an undignified whimper of pleasure.

He blearily opened his eyes to see Kakashi, dark coat, silver hair, pale skin, so very close to Iruka’s face, on his hands and knees, positioned perfectly over him.

And the man – the vampire – looked furious.

“I am _not_ lonely,” Kakashi swore vehemently down at Iruka. Even though his enthralling eye was shut firmly, his expression was one of forceful, infuriated conviction. He was clearly intending on being understood and agreed with, but Iruka was incredulous while looking up at him.

“Yes, you are,” Iruka replied back immediately, without thinking.

Kakashi’s face couldn’t hold back his irritation and surprise, nor could he keep the pink flush from saturating his too-white cheeks. “No,” he snapped back. “I am not.” His black eye narrowed as his expression shifted into glowering down at Iruka, a peculiar look for a man who was also blushing quite madly. “If you ever step foot in my apartment again, I will kill you.”

The silver-haired man stepped away from Iruka, tugging his gloves back on in obvious agitation. He wasn’t looking at Iruka anymore, but it was evident that he was well aware of the werewolf only a few feet from him. Sitting up and ignoring the wild mess on his stomach and thighs and boxers, Iruka stared at the other man in increasing skepticism. 

“No, you won’t,” he found himself saying in response.

Kakashi looked at him sharply, his fingers stopped mid-way in his task. His blushing cheeks betrayed him even as he promised with dark intensity, “If I ever see you again, Iruka Umino, I will drain every bit of blood from your body, and it will mean not a thing to me.”

Iruka didn’t even fight the amused smile as it climbed to his face. He blamed the adrenaline and the aftermath of his orgasm, but he was laughing slightly to himself as he scratched at the long scar through his cheeks. “Oh, okay,” he replied off-handedly. “I totally believe you.”

Apparently Kakashi really did not like to be teased – because the next thing Iruka knew he was back down on the cement and a slender hand encased in supple leather was strangling the life out of him. He just managed to grab Kakashi’s shirt collar, which he yanked down, exposing the frightfully vivid red bite mark that he’d left the night before. For reasons that he couldn’t discern, Iruka gripped the recent wound, slamming his thumb into the deepest spots, where his canines had broken the skin. 

Above him, Kakashi flinched badly. His grip lessened, and then Iruka snatched his pretty silver hair, and he rolled on top of the other man. He pressed Kakashi hard into the cement, breathing heavily, his dark eyes blazing bright. 

And Iruka kissed him with everything he had in himself.

Kakashi struggled for a sincere second, causing Iruka’s body to scream in protest, a dozen new bruises blooming into existence where Kakashi’s hands gripped him and his knees struck him.

But then… he moaned into Iruka’s mouth and kissed him back, hopelessly taken.

It was soft, and sweet, and strange.

Iruka loved it.

Kakashi seemed to like it, too.

Yet, before Iruka could even think what to do next, Kakashi shoved Iruka off of him so hard and with such force that Iruka was suddenly flush against the rooftop door over twenty feet away. 

With his breath knocked out of him, his head spinning, his vision blurry, Iruka could barely make out Kakashi standing up by the fence – and then flickering away in a swift silvery flash.


	3. Chapter 3

Although his mind was elsewhere, Iruka was waiting for Naruto in the kitchen when the boy came back from school. 

He listened for nearly an hour as Naruto relayed every single detail about Sasuke and his house. The other boy was living with his older brother who was never around, so Sasuke could do whatever he wanted, which meant lots of video games, take-out delivery, and martial arts practice. Sasuke could be really mean, but he also challenged Naruto a lot, and Naruto thought that Sasuke might even know that he was a youkai fox, but they hadn’t talked about it at all. Instead, they had played a few different fighting games, and then actually fought a little, too, and, after that, Sasuke made them both some really nice ramen with flank steak and scallions. 

Then they’d gone to bed, and Naruto got to sleep on the floor in a sleeping bag! Sasuke said his brother took him camping sometimes, which was pretty fun, but the mosquitoes were awful. With Sasuke in bed and Naruto on the floor, they’d kept talking for a while, about silly things, like which of them was the best racer in Mario Kart, but also more serious things, like what Christmas and birthdays are like when you don’t have any grandparents to send you any cards or presents.

When Naruto had finally run himself ragged from talking so much, Iruka asked him, slow and worried, “Do you think you’ll be okay by yourself tonight?” When the young youkai looked back at him in surprise and confusion, Iruka flushed a bit and ducked his head. “I’m sorry, Naruto, I’ve got business to attend to, it might take me most of the night.”

“I’ll be fine, Iruka-sensei!” Naruto exclaimed, reaching out and catching Iruka’s hands in his own. His bright blue eyes shone brilliantly, and Iruka found himself captivated by the boy once again. He was even more overwhelmed when Naruto asked rapidly, his expression radiating concern, “Are you okay, Iruka-sensei? Is everything alright? Did something happen last night? You can tell me!”

Iruka blinked several times. He’d hoped he could suppress everything that had occurred between him and Kakashi, but it must have been showing through his admittedly poor disguise. He glanced up at his adopted son and smiled sheepishly. “I ran into someone that I’m worried about. I’m going to see if I can find him again tonight. It might take a while.”

Naruto, although very much twelve years old, looked quite skeptical at the explanation. His smaller hands tightened around Iruka’s, and he pursed his lips together, appraising the much older man. But he finally nodded in one curt motion and declared, “Go find him, Iruka-sensei! If you think he’s in trouble, you’ve got to help him. Like how you helped me, right?”

Trying to fight back his ridiculous impulse to burst into tears, Iruka didn’t stop himself from pulling Naruto into a tight embrace, and he sighed dramatically over the boy’s shoulder. 

Yeah, he would go find Kakashi… and try to help him… but he might get killed in the process. And then what would happen to Naruto? Would he move in with this Sasuke kid? Go back to living on the streets, or get sucked up into social services, or be hunted down by other youkai?

“Iruka-sensei,” came Naruto’s muffled voice from Iruka’s chest. “I promise I’ll be fine. I can make instant ramen by myself, you know.” Embarrassed by his showy display of affection which had bordered on physical suffocating, Iruka released Naruto, who only smiled widely at him and proclaimed with distinct pride, “Sasuke showed me how to boil an egg! I can add egg to my ramen now!”

Iruka ruffled Naruto’s blonde hair and warned him, “Don’t burn the house down,” but his mind was already wandering back through the city, wondering just where Kakashi was at this very moment and what the other man might be doing. He hung around with Naruto for a few more hours, watching their favorite soap operas, listening to the frighteningly intense death metal music that Sasuke had suggested to Naruto, showing the boy yet again how all the locks worked and checking each of the smoke alarms, before he left the apartment and his dear little son.

He was irritated at how much he wanted to be a wolf again. It was barely after sunset, but Iruka couldn’t shake off the feeling and begrudgingly slipped into his wolf body, feeling relief right away. He was grumpy much of the night, not wanting to do the incredibly dumb thing and hunt Kakashi down again, but he was uncertain what he should do instead. He scared away a few stray dogs from his neighborhood; he made sure that there were no new werewolves in the streets surrounding his apartment. Iruka wasn’t surprised to discover he was still the only one around the area.

Throughout it all, he kept finding himself lifting his head and sniffing the air, trying to sense out Kakashi’s strange scent.

The full moon was white and shining above him when Iruka surrendered to his conflicted instinct. He followed Kakashi’s smell from the edge of the city back through downtown, past the hotel, past the man’s studio apartment, and then all the way to the riverside on the other side of town. The whole journey took another two hours. He dodged cars and the subway, escaped the eager eyes and sharp teeth of wolves noticing him stalking through their territories, and navigated the confusing maze of tourist traps by the river. 

Iruka had rarely visited this part of the city: he had no money to spend at the casino, or time to attend monthly music festivals, or reason to take the ferry across the river to where many of the city workers resided. When he first considered moving to the city, he’d looked around this area to see if he could find an apartment nearby, but everything was absurdly expensive. 

As he walked over the jagged rocks by the river, Iruka had to admit that the riverside during the nighttime was truly beautiful. The colorful lights of the city struck the water in such a way that the whole thing looked like a dazzling display of rainbow-colored fireworks. He stayed there for a while, watching the old-fashioned ferryboat churn through the river water from one side to the other, before Kakashi’s scent suddenly struck him again, and he resumed his hunt, rededicating himself to his cause.

While he could smell Kakashi far before he saw the man… the vampire… Iruka also saw Kakashi much further away than a human would have been able to spot him.

Underneath the ferryboat ramp, where passengers walked up a huge cement ramp to board the ferry and cross the river, there was a dark, mostly empty space of rocks, wooden debris, broken cement, and feral cats behind caution tape and construction fencing.

As Iruka slunk up to the fence as a wolf, he could easily identify Kakashi sitting on the old cement steps that tapered down into the river itself. The man was in the same beautiful black coat as earlier in the day; his silver hair was in much the same shape, loose and fluttering in the wind. He looked completely relaxed, resting his arms over his kneecaps, sitting forward and watching the colorful lights dance on the river’s surface. 

Iruka squeezed his enormous wolf body through the torn-open hole in the fence, ignoring the spikes of pain where the sharp-edged metal scratched him. 

He tried to affect submission while still walking forward, which was honestly rather difficult, but Iruka wasn’t going to give up now. He kept his ears down, his head low, but his eyes stayed open and focused on Kakashi. He made sure his hackles weren’t raised, his dark brown fur kept sleekly down. 

He managed to get within a few feet of the vampire before Kakashi looked over at him with his black right eye, his left eye shut, and Iruka realized fearfully that he’d been approaching the man from his bad side, his scarred blind side. He gulped down his anxiety and slid down into a partial bow, his throat almost touching the rocks. Kakashi watched him with so much distance he could have been on the moon itself, but Iruka wasn’t dissuaded. Even though the vampire’s expression was back to its full mask of pure empty indifference, Iruka knew he could get a reaction from the other man, he had done so before, and he was do his damn best to get it again tonight.

Iruka slowly straightened up as a wolf, inched forward just slightly, and then brought his right leg into the air, trying to present his paw to Kakashi. He knew he must look comical, probably even ridiculous, but he wanted to incite Kakashi’s amusement rather than his rage, especially since he’d obviously done the unwise, unwanted thing of hunting him down once again.

Kakashi glanced down at Iruka’s dark brown paw hanging mid-air. After a few seconds of Iruka trying very hard not to drop his arm, Kakashi finally responded to him, much to his relief. 

“You’re stupid and suicidal.”

Iruka only waggled his paw, soundlessly suggesting Kakashi shake hands.

Raising his one-eyed dark gaze to stare into Iruka’s intense yellow wolf eyes, Kakashi shook his head back and forth, slowly, simply. Before Iruka could feel too crushed at the rejection, the other man patted a gloved hand beside him on the rocks, clearly indicating that he wanted Iruka to come sit next to him. 

With far too much glee in his heart, Iruka carefully stepped forward on four paws, turned around, and sat down beside Kakashi, tucking his long tail around him on his right side. 

And there they sat together, silver-haired vampire and timber-colored werewolf, watching the pretty city lights reflect on the muddy brown river.

Iruka was never very aware of time in wolf form, but he was certainly unable to keep track when beside Kakashi. The vampire’s scent was all too strange, and soft, and fascinating. 

It wasn’t as pained as it had been last night. It didn’t seem as lonely. 

Somewhere in the back of his brain, Iruka wondered if it was due to _his_ effect on Kakashi.

“Let me see your face.”

Iruka slowly turned his wolf head to study Kakashi’s expression, but the other man was still looking ahead and seemingly nonplussed by his own request. He only glanced over when Iruka made a quiet whine down his throat and tried to express somehow that he would be nude if he transformed now. He quickly realized that his communication skills as a wolf were more than a bit poor, and Iruka found himself sagging, staring down anxiously at his paws as he scratched at the dirty rocks that they were both sitting on. 

“You can wear my coat,” Kakashi offered calmly.

Although a huge part of Iruka was screaming at him to stay as a wolf – and another strong segment of his primal instinct was demanding that _he run the fuck away from the fucking vampire what are you doing here why are you here you need to leave he will kill you he will drain you of all your blood_ \- Iruka shrugged his way out of his wolf form.

For a few traumatizing seconds, he was totally naked under the ferryboat ramp in the dead of night with a blank-faced vampire observing him with cool detachment.

But then Kakashi slung off his black wool coat and presented it with the sort of gentlemanly chivalry that one might expect from a man of a different time period. He even held the coat still as Iruka stretched both of his arms through the sleeves. Only when Iruka fully buttoned up and sat back down did Kakashi follow him, retaking his spot on the rocks, as nonchalant and tranquil as no one else could or would be in such a strange situation.

Iruka curled up on himself, pressing his knees into his chest, keeping his arms around his calves. He felt oddly embarrassed to be beside Kakashi not as a wolf, without them doing anything to each other, not sharing a word between them. He was also unprepared for his bodily reaction to being covered in Kakashi’s vampire scent; he could feel his core temperature radically rising, his scarred cheeks flushing with heat, his nude body trying to cool itself down with sweat. He definitely _liked_ Kakashi’s smell… there was no denying that. But Iruka could also tell that his wolf instincts were worried about its existence and proximity, desperate to notify him of what and who he was near, but he was still so very intrigued by it in many ways.

What Iruka read in the vampire’s scent made him worried… not for himself, but for Kakashi. 

It was sad to be so alone.

“I’m sorry I hurt you,” Iruka suddenly blurted out.

Leaning back on his palms, Kakashi turned to look at him with two raised silver eyebrows. His scarlet-and-black eye remained closed as he considered Iruka with his single dark eye. He studied Iruka with incredible meticulous care, like he was just now noticing the other man. 

It felt like several hours passed before Kakashi swept his one-eyed gaze back out towards the river. His comment came a few moments after that and sounded as distant as the vampire’s own impassive expression.

“No one’s ever bitten me before.”

Iruka found himself leaning to his right side, deliberately pressing his shoulder against Kakashi’s. The other man didn’t startle or stiffen, but his expression shifted slightly, signaling he had felt the touch and wasn’t sure what to make of it. But Iruka couldn’t help himself, he was finally feeling his shame from earlier in the day catching up with him, and he wanted to spill out everything that had been plaguing him all day, including what should have been a hundred different apologies for every aspect of his terrible behavior.

Iruka forced himself to confess, concise but repentant, “I shouldn’t have broken into your apartment. I’m sorry for that, too.” Looking nervously at Kakashi, he tried to appeal to the other man with soft brown eyes and an apologetic expression. 

Kakashi wasn’t having it, though. Instead, he replied coldly without even glancing at Iruka, “Finally having regrets?”

Iruka practically threw himself away from Kakashi, he was so astonished by the accusation. He instantly exclaimed, “No!” with far too much force, which he could tell immediately because Kakashi finally looked fully at him, his whole face on display. He appeared genuinely confused at Iruka’s loud denunciation of his comment, his single dark eye going wide and trying to understand the new look of mortification and dismay on Iruka’s own face. 

Ultimately, Iruka ended up insisting, determined to be firm but careful at the same time, “No, I don’t regret anything.” He paused, swallowing, feeling the shame of his behavior strangling him, not unlike what Kakashi had done to him hours earlier on the hotel roof-top. Iruka winced at the recent memory, but it was swiftly replaced by the imagery of him holding Kakashi’s arms over his head, biting down on the soft skin of Kakashi’s neck, forcibly kissing the other man in his own apartment. He could hear his voice shaking, both depressed and disappointed with himself, as he tried to explain, “I just - I didn’t ask you if you wanted to –”

Kakashi interrupted him so sharply it was as if a knife had sliced open Iruka’s throat.

It had not. It was only Kakashi’s excruciatingly honest confession cutting through the night.

“I thought you were there to kill me.”

Iruka’s shoulders slumped down inside the other man’s coat. His mouth dropped open, too, and his eyes suddenly shone with sincere horror. He would have loved to have been able to respond, but he was so terribly lost in the idea of Kakashi thinking that he had invaded his space to kill him – when that hadn’t been his intent at all!

Yet, then again, the hazy vision of Iruka’s mother running her finger down the sketch, showing the sharp tip of the vampire’s fangs, saying _vampires and werewolves are mortal enemies…_

“But then you kissed me.”

Iruka went still instinctively. He kept his eyes fixed on Kakashi as he tried to understand what was going on between them. He could tell the other man was thinking something, working through something, but he couldn’t put his finger, his paw, on just what was going on in the man’s undoubtedly complicated mind. But his own brain, human and wolf melded into one, was darting through all his options, which confusingly included running away and tearing out Kakashi’s throat, but also more prominently featured grabbing the vampire and remorselessly having his way with him. 

Iruka realized he was breathing heavier as he leaned forward…

And Kakashi suddenly caught his chin with frighteningly strong fingers, at a speed too quick to see.

To his infinite relief, though, Kakashi looked more amused with him than upset. The other man was almost smiling with those thin pale lips of his, and he seemed faintly pleased as he remarked, “You really are fearless, aren’t you?”

Before Iruka could respond, however, Kakashi evidently went through with what he had been contemplating, because once again, he opened his scarred left eye, and Iruka became dazed and dizzy, his whole body wanting to collapse down and drown in the river. His hand desperately clutched at the rocks at his side, trying instinctively to keep himself upright and stable. Yet – yet he was so very fixated on the fine black sparkles in that spinning circle of blood red – he could see each one of them glisten and shine, crystalline and divine.

“What do you want, Iruka Umino?” 

Iruka’s voice was weak, but he meant every word as he answered, “I want to take you.”

He could just hear Kakashi, who sounded surprised and a little perplexed at Iruka’s reply. The other man, the vampire, asked him something cautious, something like, “What do you mean?”

The black sparkles were so unendingly breathtaking and bewildering; they were like the nighttime inversions of the rainbow lights on the river. They were wonderful, and Iruka loved them, but he could hear himself talking as if they weren’t the only perfect, fascinating thing in existence.

With his dark eyes and attention and soul entangled and trapped by Kakashi’s single scarlet-and-black eye, Iruka confessed, thoughtlessly, yet so terribly truthfully: “I want to take you right now under this bridge. I want to take you home. I want you to live with me, now, forever.”

Kakashi was silent for a long while after that.

Iruka had no idea how much time passed. He didn’t care. He loved, loved, loved the black sparkles in Kakashi’s scarred left eye. He would take care of them for eternity. He would make them breakfast and lay with them in bed all morning, every morning. He would do whatever they wanted. He would –

“You like collecting stray monsters, Iruka Umino?” 

The question floated through his mind, like a little speck of dust on the wind, yet, in response, Iruka struggled to move his fingers forward to touch the very edge of Kakashi’s pants. 

His voice was lowered, confused, unsettled, as he announced while still swept up in the vampire’s enchantment, “I don’t want you to be lonely.”

Kakashi closed his scarred left eye. 

As Iruka’s vision returned to him, he noticed that Kakashi was faintly blushing, a very pretty sight in the near darkness of the night, and had started to look away from him. Iruka moved rapidly, even though his whole body cried out in confusion at the crazy rush of movement. He pulled Kakashi forward by grabbing the back of the man’s head and kissed him so thoroughly and desperately that he couldn’t tell if the head-spinning heat rising within him was the end of the charm or his own instinctive want. He couldn’t bear to be gentle with the other man; he was pushing him down on the rocks and straddling him with powerful force, even while keeping his hands behind Kakashi’s head to protect him from smashing his skull against the rocks. 

Iruka was absolutely delighted when Kakashi started to return the kiss with equivalent passion. He wasn’t even worried when Kakashi did the same thing that he had done the night before, parting his lips and inviting Iruka to lick inside his mouth. This time, though, Iruka slowed down and thought about things and found what he was interested in: Kakashi _did_ have fangs, though nothing nearly as terrifying as the sketch that Iruka had seen as a child. 

He soon backed away a bit so he could kiss Kakashi more carefully. He tried to get a glimpse of the other man between kisses, and he got the sweet shimmer of Kakashi’s pink-painted cheeks and a single lusty half-lidded eye. Flushed and loving every moment between them, Iruka leaned down again – but then –

Iruka jumped backwards off of Kakashi, flew into his wolf body, and began growling so loudly that he could feel his ribcage shuddering in his chest.

There on the same side of the fence as them, standing under the ferryboat ramp, were three werewolves, including the big white wolf with a mess of scars ruining his otherwise pristine fur. Iruka recognized _him_ immediately: he was the one stalking and hunting Iruka the night before. The other two wolves on each of his sides were peppered grey-and-white, the one on the right being the youngest of the three. The left one was the oldest but was obviously leaving leadership up to its larger white brethren. They were no longer silent now that Iruka was staring at them with his dark furred hackles raised and growling furiously in warning at them. 

Instead, they were responding in kind, baring saliva-slick sharp teeth, glaring at him with sick yellow eyes that betrayed too much intellect for them to be anything but werewolves.

Iruka launched himself at the white wolf, swinging hard to the right when the bigger wolf tried to snap down at him, the bite only missing him by a few inches. He slammed his paws roughly into the wolf’s flank and brought his jaws down onto the back of the other werewolf’s head. On pure instinct, Iruka started to shake, feeling his teeth sinking further and further through dense fur, through tough flesh, into writhing muscle. The white werewolf howled in pain and bucked hard enough that Iruka was flung over his head and smashed downwards on his spine. 

He was trying to twist back over onto his paws when –

While still upside down but wrestling himself upright, Iruka saw the young grey wolf beside him, snarling, step towards where Iruka and Kakashi had been sitting… 

A small rock struck the werewolf in the dead center of his face, right between his yellow eyes. 

And he stumbled forward and collapsed on the rocks, knocked utterly unconscious. 

When Iruka righted himself, he swung up his head to see the white wolf come crashing down upon him, snatching Iruka’s throat with huge spit-dripping teeth. He was scratching at the other werewolf’s chest, ripping out huge chunks of snow-white fur, spreading bloody red lines all over the already scarred creature. As he wrenched his head back, trying to get his throat out of the wolf’s dangerous grip, Iruka witnessed the most peculiar thing he had ever seen in his life.

Out of the corner of his eye, Kakashi sauntered into view.

He had reclaimed his black coat, but it was unbuttoned and open, showing his long lean body under a form-fitting turtleneck. Kakashi’s hands were down deep in his coat pockets, and he looked genuinely indifferent to the belligerent werewolf and the whole commotion itself. He completely ignored the threatening snarls of the grey wolf, who finally jumped at him after mustering up a foolish fit of courage.

Kakashi effortlessly side-stepped him with glorious grace –

\- and then literally punted the wolf into the river.

He’d only kicked once, but the blow sent the wolf flying far beyond the rocky shore.

At first, Iruka was sure he was hallucinating from pain, but then the grey werewolf surfaced halfway across the muddy river as a dark-haired naked human man sputtering up water. 

In an insane and truly delirious moment, Iruka wondered at just how strong and dangerous vampires really were, and if he was an absolute moron for becoming so rapidly infatuated with one, and had he just invited Kakashi to live with him forever?? – but, horrifically, all of a sudden, the white wolf was jerking him up high off the ground, and Iruka could feel the taut muscles in his neck tearing, spilling and spraying blood over the both of them.

Although he couldn’t perceive it with complete clarity, Iruka could see Kakashi’s gloved fingers coming near his eyes – and then they were down inside the white wolf’s slobbering mouth, audibly breaking off several teeth before Kakashi cracked the werewolf’s lower jawbone in half so ferociously loudly that Iruka’s sensitive ears echoed with the horrendous noise.

The white wolf dropped Iruka instantly.

Visibly going into shock from sudden pain, the white wolf had little time to do much else – because, less than a second later, Kakashi threw him like a garbage bag into the river.

Iruka could feel the new hot wounds in his neck bleeding, and his body making sharp wild cries of agony, but he found he was most desperate to see Kakashi. The man had just kicked a wolf three hundred feet – and he’d thrown another the same distance using only one hand – after he’d dropped a third by throwing a tiny stone. Iruka tried to make it to all four paws, but his throat felt funny and wrong and raw, and soon he was coughing up blood on the pale rock while frantically struggling to breathe.

Kakashi’s gloved hands were on him a moment later, forcibly closing the bite wounds on Iruka’s densely furred throat. He was quickly wrapping some sort of cloth around Iruka’s whole neck that smelled just like him, so very sweet and soft. His fingers plucked some of the white wolf’s torn fur off Iruka’s forehead and flicked it to the side like one might dispose of a cigarette. As he hummed to himself, Kakashi watched the homemade bandages stop saturating with blood. After that, he sat back a little on the rocks, carefully examining the rest of Iruka’s wolf body.

Iruka could feel his yellow lupine eyes instinctively locking on Kakashi. Adrenaline continued to seize and soar through his system: he was scared of suffering, of dying, of another ambush. It felt like he was still bleeding out, even though he definitely wasn’t anymore because of Kakashi’s much-needed intervention. Iruka wanted to say something to the other man, but he knew he couldn’t shift into his human form right now, not with these wounds, so instead he urgently tried to present Kakashi with his most anxious expression and his most pitiful eyes.

In response, strangely, the other man stretched a little, lifting his arms over his head. 

Iruka noticed for the first time that he’d torn off the lower half of his turtleneck, exposing the entirety of his moon-white, unmarked, muscular abdomen. 

_Kakashi used his shirt to make bandages for him…!_

The other man glanced down at Iruka before he reached over and suddenly picked him up entirely off the ground, flipping him onto his back so Kakashi was carrying him like an oversized wolf bride.

After Iruka finally adjusted the unbelievably bizarre experience, Kakashi shrugged both of his shoulders, giving Iruka a subtle smile. Sounding untroubled by the last few minutes, or the fact that he was holding a werewolf in his arms, he remarked lazily, looking down at Iruka with his single dark eye, “Sure, I’ll live with you. Someone needs to protect you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had originally planned to end this here, but folks seem to really enjoy this story, so... the journey will continue...


	4. Chapter 4

Iruka Umino passed out long before Kakashi brought him home.

He had never carried a werewolf before, but he had moved plenty of dying and dead humans, as well as a few youkai and demons. The method was much the same; he had no issue with the extra two hundred pounds. As Iruka dazedly stared up at him with those big bright yellow eyes of his, Kakashi decided to stay silent and start heading across the city.

Kakashi ignored the profanity-laced shouts from the old werewolf in the river trying to save his pack leader. He walked around the young pup still unconscious and face-down in the rocks. Amusing him just a little, Iruka made a small sound of surprise deep within his wolf chest when Kakashi jumped over the construction fence and landed on the other side.

Over the next two hours, he disregarded countless stares from drunk humans staggering through the streets. 

They were well past his old apartment and Iruka’s downtown hotel when Kakashi glanced down to check on Iruka – and found his massive wolf head slumped against Kakashi’s arm, his vibrant eyes fully closed, his pink tongue sticking out a bit past his sharp teeth.

_Cute. Very cute._

The only interesting part of the stroll home was when two uniformed policemen on horses noticed him strolling across the city with a wolf in his arms. Fortunately, the woman of the pair stopped her partner from accosting Kakashi, recognizing on good instinct that he was something fearful. As he passed them, Kakashi gave her an appreciative nod, making her stiffen and blush at the same time. He meandered on by without looking back.

Since he had previously followed Iruka back to his apartment to learn more about his mysterious not-assassin, Kakashi simply retraced his steps. Although he imagined his supernatural speed could have gotten them back in a shorter time period, Kakashi wasn’t entirely sure if werewolves could survive such swift movement. Considering he no longer had any interest in killing Iruka Umino, he instead took a long leisurely walk with a wolf in his arms.

Dawn had only just painted the skies radiant pink and soft orange when Kakashi broke into Iruka’s building with a well-placed kick to the doorknob. He silently swept inside, closing the door behind him while briefly holding Iruka’s big wolf body with one arm. Even though he wasn’t particularly excited about what was about to happen next, Kakashi shrugged his shoulders, steeling himself for an uncomfortable interaction. Using his free hand, he knocked on Iruka’s apartment door, adjusted Iruka back into both arms, and waited.

The terrifying little youkai opened the door.

His blue eyes were far brighter than they should have been, attracting Kakashi’s attention rightaway. _Ah, he must have been waiting all night for Iruka to come home..._ The youkai’s boyish face was already upset as he went to answer the door, but his expression worsened when he saw Iruka, bloodied and passed out, in the hands of a stranger. 

He’d heard Iruka call the youkai _Naruto_. 

Kakashi would have personally referred to him as _world-ender_ or _he who could kill us all._

But, from what he saw the evening before, Iruka didn’t think of the youkai that way, not at all. In contrast, the remarkably strange creature that was Iruka Umino seemed to treat this literal hell-raising youkai as his blood-related kin, a young beloved son who deserved a listening ear and a comforting embrace. 

As Kakashi stared down at Naruto now, he recalled how Iruka had snuggled up with the youkai on the ratty couch in the living room, easily putting his arm around Naruto and freely laughing with him at the dramatic antics of television soap operas.

… like Naruto _wasn’t_ destined to destroy the city... _again_.

Seeing Iruka now, Naruto’s eyes flashed an unearthly blue, far beyond their normal hue, and restless fury and fear replaced his previous child-like wonder. 

“Bring him inside,” the youkai said quickly, gesturing for Kakashi to enter the apartment.

Sadly, though, that wasn’t enough of an invitation, leaving Kakashi to stand in the hall. He certainly wasn’t going to force his way into Iruka’s apartment, particularly since Iruka had just done the fascinating and unbelievable thing of suggesting they live together. In addition to the wear and tear on his body from such an action, Kakashi knew too well that breaking such a barrier could destroy the space itself, shattering glass and cracking wood and crumbling brick. 

So he stayed silent, unmoving, and hoped that his lack of reaction would provoke –

“Come in!” Naruto demanded impatiently, glaring at Kakashi like he was an idiot.

As usual, the impatience of short-lived creatures saved him. 

He had assumed that Naruto had shared spiritual ownership over the apartment, a belief proven correct as the space tolerated Kakashi stepping inside its entrance. Even as Naruto tore through the living room and kitchen to the bathroom, Kakashi stopped to slip off his shoes at the door, still holding Iruka in his arms. Feeling more comfortable than he safely ought to be, he ventured after Naruto, unhurriedly taking note of the sparse but warm decorations throughout the apartment. Once inside the bathroom, Kakashi found the youkai pointing energetically at the tub; the boy had pushed aside a truly silly-looking dolphin-and-seashell patterned shower curtain to give Kakashi optimum access. 

Even though he was quite confident in his journey across the city, Kakashi had certainly never eased a wounded werewolf out of his arms and into a bathtub. 

He felt a peculiar pang of worry in his slowly beating heart.

Since Iruka Umino was special… and now he was quite partial to the man… he wasn’t going to take a chance on hurting him. After thinking about it much longer than Naruto could comfortably handle, Kakashi finally kneeled down on the blue bath-mat, noticing for the first time that he was covered in Iruka’s blood. Using the same slow manner in which he placed flowers on the graves of his friends, Kakashi rested Iruka’s large wolf body down on the plastic bottom of the tub.

_Gentle and deliberate._

But, because he was determined to avoid any sort of physical contact with the youkai, Kakashi soon stepped backwards and stood in the doorframe. He watched in skillfully concealed surprise as Naruto jumped into the bathtub after Iruka. Much to Kakashi’s great internal distress, Naruto suddenly started glowing the same surreal aquamarine color that his eyes had turned… and then he was pressing his hands against Kakashi’s shirt-bandages around Iruka’s injured throat… and then he was tugging those aside to directly heal the wounds themselves. 

He didn’t look back at Kakashi even once. 

Kakashi couldn’t exactly tell if Naruto was naively too-trusting of the man bringing his guardian home to him – or if the youkai recognized, consciously or not, that he could easily kill Kakashi.

He didn’t waste energy trying to understand the fox spirit. Most of the time, youkai barely piqued his interest, being far too impulsive and quick to act, never slowing down or thinking things through. Although Kakashi had rarely engaged them in combat, he had never once lost against a youkai, even the old ones who took their time properly strategizing during a fight.

But, then again, none of them had been as inherently powerful as this _Naruto_ boy.

Just as his discomfort started to truly catch up with him, Iruka suddenly stirred in his wolf form. Kakashi tried not to react, but he found himself staring at the werewolf in sharp-eyed curiosity. With his demon eye closed, he could see Iruka’s awakening with perfect clarity. The man’s long lupine legs twitched and scratched at the plastic; his large head shook against the rim as he worked himself into consciousness. 

With disconcerting amounts of concern, Naruto touched Iruka’s wounded neck and scarred muzzle, exclaiming much louder than Kakashi cared for: “Iruka-sensei, you’re home! It’s okay, I healed you! You’re going to be fine!”

As Naruto shouted in the werewolf’s face, Iruka began to wake up more, lifting his head and struggling to open his large yellow eyes. He groggily looked over Naruto, clearly taking the boy in – and he then put his whole head in Naruto’s out-stretched hands in relief, provoking a surprising amount of jealousy from Kakashi.

Yet, instead of closing his eyes, finally feeling at peace because he was home, Iruka didn’t choose to rest. Instead he inspected Naruto with new genuine worry, trying to assess if the boy had made it through the night fine by himself. Kakashi watched Iruka’s yellow eyes studying the blood covering Naruto’s hands, making sure that it was his own and not the youkai’s or someone else’s. He could see Iruka raise his nose slightly, sniffing out any new scent on the boy.

_He’s kind to the very worst of us... How is it no one has killed him yet?_

All of a sudden, Iruka noticed Kakashi standing nearby.

He would have expected a smart werewolf to scramble backwards in the bathtub, desperately attempting to escape his presence – or a stupid werewolf to ready himself for a fatal fight, baring teeth, controlling shaking bones, trying to steady a panicked gaze.

In stark contrast, Iruka shifted straight out of his wolf form. Almost the very second he had a human mouth and throat and lungs again, the werewolf gushed, beaming with gratitude, focusing on Kakashi without the slightest bit of fear, “Thank you for saving me! I would have died if you hadn’t intervened.” 

Iruka’s overly-expressive brown eyes spread light into the darkest shadows. Immediately in response Kakashi’s face grew hot – even though blood pushed so slow through his veins he almost never felt a thing, let alone ever ended up blushing.

_But he blushed all the time around Iruka._

“Who is he, Iruka-sensei?” Naruto asked, curious but confused. He began to scrutinize Kakashi like he was going to be tested on Kakashi’s face and was trying to cram everything into his brain seconds before the exam was handed out. 

If Naruto had been an ordinary human child, Kakashi would have found the expression uninteresting, but on such a youkai, he was worried that his skin might burst into flame and he’d have to break apart Iruka’s plumbing to save himself from a traumatic second death.

Although very much nude and covered in blood with a ring of fading bruises around his neck, Iruka effortlessly sat up in the bathtub and put a calming hand on Naruto’s arm. “His name is Kakashi Hatake, and he’ll be living with us from now on,” he explained with impossible serenity. 

A normal boy might have turned back to look at his guardian – but Naruto was definitely something else – and he continued to stare at Kakashi without batting a bright blue eye.

“So, what is he?”

_There we go._

Before Kakashi could even be amused that the youkai instinctively knew what he was but couldn’t put a name to it, Iruka interrupted all his thoughts by declaring, severely disapproving, “Naruto! Don’t be rude.”

Continuing to defy expectations, Naruto only sharpened his stare on Kakashi. He was growing increasingly tense; his body was angling just slightly in protection of Iruka. Naruto spoke in a low tone like he thought Kakashi couldn’t hear him, “He’s not human. You know that, right, Iruka-sensei?”

Suddenly grabbing Naruto’s ear and pulling down, Iruka snapped out, “Yes, I know that, Naruto! Don’t be so rude. Kakashi saved me from a bad situation tonight, he does not deserve you staring at him like that.” Even though Naruto managed to look sheepish, glancing back at Iruka, Kakashi could tell that the youkai was still ready and willing to defend his guardian if needed.

As a consequence, Kakashi clarified in complete monotone, “I’m a vampire.”

Then Iruka shot _him_ a disapproving look, and Kakashi felt like he might die once again, this time from being wordlessly scolded. He felt a damnable blush hit his cheeks from embarrassment, but Iruka’s attention was already back on Naruto as he explained quickly, “Kakashi isn’t going to hurt you or me. He’s a good guy. He’s promised to take care of us.”

On cue, Naruto started to protest. “We don’t need –” 

But Iruka cut him off so decisively that Kakashi himself felt taken aback. “You remember when that wolf broke into the house and broke all our things?” Iruka sharply reminded the youkai, who began to nod obediently, looking less threatening and more like a human boy accepting his God-given fate. “Well, Kakashi is here to make sure that doesn’t happen again. No one’s going to hurt us with him around.”

Naruto hung his head, absolutely abashed. “Okay, Iruka-sensei. If you’re okay with him, I will be, too.”

Iruka patted the youkai’s arm comfortingly, but he threw a displeased glare over at Kakashi, causing his one open eye to widen in surprise. The werewolf noted shortly to both of them, “Now, I’m going to take a shower. You two change your clothes and put them in the bin. I’ll wash them when I’m done.” When Naruto started to step out of the bathtub, Iruka added, his voice easily slipping back into fatherly concern, “Do you want to go to school today? You don’t have to, if you don’t want. I can tell you stayed up waiting for me.” 

“No, I want to go,” Naruto rapidly answered and shot past Kakashi, abruptly untroubled by his presence. The youkai kept shouting back at Iruka as he ran towards his bedroom: “Anime Club is meeting after school! We’re going to watch _Spirited Away_. I’m bringing popcorn for everyone!”

Although Kakashi wanted to say something else to Iruka, the werewolf looked him expectantly before bringing up both hands – and then, much to his astonishment, Iruka literally shooed him away. 

Feeling inexplicably scolded, Kakashi left the bathroom and wandered down the hallway until he found what he imagined was Iruka’s private bedroom. He slipped inside, closing the door behind him, not particularly sure what he was going to do. Even though he had studied Iruka – and Naruto – through the windows yesterday, he had never considered that he would one day _be inside_ the man’s apartment. 

Kakashi tried not to feel like an incompetent thief as he went through Iruka’s dresser drawers in search of new clothes. He picked out the first things he saw, if only because he was so flustered and discombobulated by the strange turn of events during the last few hours. 

As he started to pull off his coat, Kakashi suddenly realized that the fabric was _soaked_ in Iruka’s blood… 

Kakashi’s hands were still wet with blood as well.

He swallowed roughly. 

Lifting his hands to his face, Kakashi tried to smell anything… but, to him, there was simply no scent at all.

On instinct, he flicked his tongue across the center of his bloodied palm.

_Oh… definitely werewolf. Fresh and full of iron…_

Kakashi shuddered, although he honestly couldn’t tell if it was out of revulsion or want. He ignored the thousand different messages running through his brain and instead undressed, vigilantly holding his bloody clothes off the ground. He managed to put on an old black shirt and a pair of loose grey sweatpants without getting blood on anything. Even though much of him wanted to lurk around Iruka’s bedroom and find out all the werewolf’s secrets, he went back out into the kitchen, searching for the dirty clothes bin.

Naruto was already there, taking out a lunch that Iruka must have made for him the night before – knowing that he might not return in time to make one for Naruto in the morning.

 _Is this guy trying for sainthood…?_

Kakashi hung back in the hallway, uncertain just how to interact with the young youkai. The power differential was quite clear to him, but he couldn’t tell if Naruto understood it as well. Certainly the boy seemed like he would protect Iruka against a whole horde of demons with the same zeal that he’d knock out a too-flirtatious coffee barista in defense of Iruka’s honor. 

But Naruto caught him lingering about with his sharp blue eyes and gave him a firm warning.

“I’m going to trust Iruka-sensei on this one but –”

\- and then the very air in the kitchen was sucked out of existence, and Naruto’s bodily glow wasn’t a soothing blue-aquamarine but a very fine translucent blood-crimson, and his youthful face went suddenly angular and animalistic, filling with a shadowy sinister snarl –

“ _If you hurt him, I’ll tear you apart._ ”

Kakashi so rarely felt fear that he wasn’t sure what was happening, but he caught on quickly enough, so he forced himself to lean against the hallway wall with far more pretended calm than was actually coursing through him. He carefully but coolly nodded towards the youkai, crossing his arms over his chest.

“Understood.”

And then it was all over – the red glow – the fox face – and the suffocating aura.

Well-timed, too, because just then Iruka swung open the bathroom door, appearing in a fluffy white bathrobe and looking remarkably satisfied with life. His hair was tied up, and he was entirely clean of blood and debris. His fascinating facial scar was on full display, his neck badly bruised from the healing wounds.

 _He looks absolutely adorable._

Clearly unaware of Kakashi’s thoughts, Iruka smiled right at him, taking his bloodied clothes from him, and said dazzlingly, “I’ll get your coat dry-cleaned for you! I guess I’ll have to buy you a new shirt. Naruto, where’s your PJs? I’ll wash them with Kakashi’s pants.” 

What followed was what Kakashi imagined must happen rather frequently in the Umino household: Iruka rushed around the apartment, prepping Naruto for school, which included checking his lunch a few times more and adding another packet of baby carrots (“You need to eat more vegetables! Please, Naruto, they’re orange, your favorite color!”). Naruto seemed to simultaneously resent and appreciate being fussed over, as if he was a normal twelve-year-old boy… and not a truly terrifying youkai known and feared through the ages.

Naruto looked particularly chagrined when Iruka started apologizing for not making breakfast. He actually held the werewolf’s hands in his own and told him that he really was a _very good dad_ and that it was totally okay, he would just grab a breakfast sandwich from the corner store. 

Although that seemed like a fine compromise to Kakashi, Iruka looked like he’d been stabbed in the heart. He was only consoled when Naruto accepted that they would go out for _really good ramen_ over the weekend.

Then, suddenly, in the whirlwind of the morning, Naruto was out the door and off to school.

Iruka turned around to face Kakashi, his expression changing in an instant.

The very next second Iruka had Kakashi up against the living room wall, he was kissing Kakashi with both hands holding the sides of Kakashi’s face, he had his full body flush against Kakashi’s, their hips almost perfectly aligned.

In between wild hungry kisses, Iruka was saying breathlessly, “Thank you, thank you so much,” even as he ruthlessly pursued Kakashi with every last ounce of energy left in him. 

Kakashi was so very thrown once again by Iruka’s primal persistence that it took him a moment to register what was happening to him, between them.

But he finally figured it out, and he started kissing the other man back, causing Iruka to shiver in delight and grip his cheeks and hair even harder. Kakashi was losing his hold on reality far too quickly to understand Iruka’s intentions, and he had no defense at all when Iruka’s hand forcibly pushed into his sweatpants and grasped his rising erection. He tried not to swoon or shudder at the glorious new contact, but Iruka made it impossible to control himself as the werewolf fiercely whispered against his scarred cheek, “I love how you smell wearing my clothes, you smell amazing, _I just can’t stand it._ ”

Before Kakashi could comprehend what that meant, Iruka was down on his knees, the sweatpants were halfway down Kakashi’s thighs, and Iruka’s mouth was on him, taking in all of him, and Kakashi slammed himself against the wall, trying to stay stable when he just wanted to fall into pieces and faint on the floor. He couldn’t handle the feel of Iruka’s warm lips, mouth, tongue on his suddenly impossibly hard cock; he was shaking all over, he was struggling to keep his demon eye shut, he was trying to look at Iruka and not look at him for fear that he would come right away from sheer stunning wonder. He found his hand moving down to caress Iruka’s hair, but he wasn’t prepared for Iruka’s response as the other man grabbed him from behind and forced him much further into his eager waiting wanting mouth. 

Kakashi could just barely hear his own moans made out of his control. He could clearly, excruciatingly hear the wet lewd sounds that Iruka was making below him, downing his cock like he was desperate to devour Kakashi’s sin and seed and soul. He was so flushed he wondered if he might pass right the fuck out, there being so little blood anywhere besides his arousal and face. 

He accidentally gripped Iruka’s hair with some of his true strength, and Kakashi stared down at him in a sharp spike of anxiety, deeply afraid that he’d hurt the werewolf, but –

Iruka’s scarred cheeks were reddened from arousal, his brown eyes half-lidded with lust. He glanced up at the same time that Kakashi looked down, and, unsettling every set thing in Kakashi’s existence, he gave a slight subtle smile – with his lips wrapped around Kakashi’s cock.

Kakashi forced his demon eye to stay shut as he flung back his head and came hard in Iruka’s warm wondrous mouth.

He was breathing out loud like he really needed oxygen, which he absolutely didn’t, making the whole thing all the more bewildering and hot and insane.

Although Iruka was rocking back on his feet, looking quite pleased with himself, Kakashi recognized that the man wasn’t going to do anything for himself, and he was too much a damn gentleman to let that happen. 

He reached down and grabbed the werewolf’s left arm, pulling him up without restraining himself. Even though Iruka seemed to foolishly trust him far far too much, the man’s face still flickered with confusion, a look that spun into surprise as Kakashi kept roughly moving him upwards before he grabbed Iruka behind his thighs, forcing the other man to embrace him and wrap his legs around Kakashi’s waist. 

Keeping precise track of where they were in the room, Kakashi walked the few feet to drop Iruka on the kitchen counter, and he went for Iruka’s neck a second later, falling back into his fascination with the werewolf’s bare brown throat. His hands did the rest of the work for him without much conscious thought: he undid Iruka’s robe, shoved it aside, started stroking Iruka’s cock with insistent skill and strength. 

Pressed up against his ear, Iruka was moaning so unrestrained and wild that Kakashi felt his deadened heart beat harder, and he had to stop himself from biting down on Iruka’s throat in primitive satisfaction at such a true delirious reaction to him.

Instead his wrapped his other arm around Iruka so he could touch the man’s back, greedily seeking out the large scar that he had seen on the werewolf when he shifted nude by the river. 

_I’m never going to let anyone hurt you again, ever, ever, ever…_

Iruka came with the same blissful gasp that he had the first time they were together. He was _clinging_ to Kakashi, he was holding on for dear life. He kept himself wrapped up with Kakashi as he swung down from his orgasm, not that Kakashi minded in the slightest. He was drunk on the feel of the man, this werewolf, hanging onto him, collapsed in his arms, intertwined with him, breathing _him_ in and not feeling fear and disgust but lust and fascination and acceptance and, and, and…

Kakashi stared hopelessly over Iruka’s shoulder at the kitchen wall.

_… how in the world am I going to tell him I’m a virgin?_


	5. Chapter 5

Kakashi was back in his apartment, staring at a partially filled suitcase, when a powerful series of knocks struck his front door… Three sharp - _Knock-knock-knock_ \- then one loud - _knockkkkk!!_

Then the knocks escalated into a perfect fist-based rendition of Ludwig van Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 in C Minor, Op. 67.

Kakashi turned to look at the door, already knowing precisely who was there and why the man was using Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony in such a crude manner so early in the morning.

Maito Gai had been in Austria when Beethoven’s orchestral composition was first performed, and he’d fallen in love with the stirring piece, even though the rest of the world had viewed it with far less enthusiasm initially. Even though Kakashi had not been in Austria at the time – he had slipped down to Portugal to participate in the Peninsular War on behalf of Napoleon – he clearly remembered receiving Gai’s gushing letter about “the song that will be forever played in theatres around the world.” 

And so Gai had used Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony as a way to knock on Kakashi’s door for the last two hundred and eleven years.

Kakashi opened his apartment door, imagining it would be for the last time at this location, and readied himself for their centuries-long usual competition. 

He only did so after opening his scarred demon eye.

Instantly Gai’s green-glowing right hand flew by his face while his left hand, similarly outlined in colorful flame, tried to catch Kakashi’s slender waist. 

Of course, Kakashi automatically dodged both attacks. He stepped backwards, but Gai was immediately following him, his right hand aiming for Kakashi’s shoulder this time. While nearly throwing his arm out of joint with brutal force, Kakashi instinctively implemented a ballet-inspired move to avoid Gai’s other hand, stepping aside with pointed grace. 

He took that peculiar moment to consider Gai this morning.

With his demon eye open to the world, Kakashi could see more than Gai’s normal appearance, the one most living creatures on the planet saw when they looked at him. Of course he knew _that version_ of the man – he saw it every time he had left eye closed. 

It was the much more fascinating _other version_ that still managed to intrigue him after all these years.

Gai had pitch-black hair in both forms and kept his overly muscled human shape, too. But the rest of him utterly changed when viewed with demon eyes: the most significant one was the violently visible immortality curse literally written into and across his tanned skin. 

As usual, the abyssal black chains were endlessly moving across the exposed portions of Gai’s flesh, sliding into hiding under his black track suit about his neck and wrists. They had been moving the same way ever since Kakashi first met Gai way back in 1776, the day after Christmas, when Gai had lumbered alongside then-General George Washington crossing the Delaware River. Kakashi had drunkenly opened his eyes, surrounded by partied-out Hessian mercenaries, to see a massively muscled man with black magic chains rotating rapidly along his skin.

Still quite drunk on stolen rum, Kakashi had remarked in intoxicated fascination, staring past the rifle pointed in his face: “Oh, look at you… so badly cursed at such a young age. Just who did you insult to get burdened with everlasting life?”

Instead of understandably shooting Kakashi dead, Gai had dropped his rifle, took Kakashi as a prisoner of war, and then mercilessly followed him for the rest of time.

Now, well into the twenty-first century, Kakashi found that Gai looked just the same as when they had first met, nearly two hundred and fifty years earlier.

Of course, the black track suit was new, but Gai’s all-white burning eyes, the supernatural green fire that surrounded his swiftly moving body, and the thick dark magic chains turning mechanically across the exposed skin of his hands and face – those were exactly, _exactly_ the same.

This particular day’s dance lasted another few seconds; Kakashi won more than half of the time, as Gai tended to surrender naturally after that period so they could actually engage in conversation. This time, Gai seemed particularly more insistent, and Kakashi found himself rather tired of trying to avoid him, and so he internally shrugged to himself and stopped defensive pirouettes and let what would undoubtedly happen… happen.

Gai’s left hand caught him first around the waist – and his right went to Kakashi’s left shoulder a second later – and then Kakashi was smashed against Gai’s enormous chest in a fantastically violent full-bodied embrace. He couldn’t have taken in a breath if he had wanted to, not that he needed to. Instead, he briefly allowed himself to listen to Gai’s out-of-control heartbeat, the one that sounded not unlike the orchestral piece, The Flight of the Bumblebee, both wicked and speeding.

His own heart sounded like if someone tapped a single finger on wood once every fifteen minutes or so.

“Good morning, Eternal Rival!” Gai boomed in his ear, nearly deafening him. Barely a moment later, the immortal human whipped through a few other ‘good mornings’ in several different languages, each more complicated than the last. Being just as old and informed as Gai, Kakashi understood almost all of them, though he did perk up at the newest addition.

“Is that Thai?” Kakashi mused into Gai’s chest, his arms dangling limply at his sides. 

Gai’s ‘good morning’ single-man chorus stopped, dissolving into a loud bark of laughter. 

“Good catch, rival!” he declared, shamelessly and honestly impressed with Kakashi. 

Gai let Kakashi loose so he could thrust a thumb’s up into the air and give him an especially wide, white-teethed grin. “I’m hoping to learn all of the Thai dialects in the next decade!” 

As usual, Gai wasn’t looking at Kakashi when he had his demon eye open. 

He had learned long ago that staring straight at Kakashi when Obito’s eye was on full display meant that he would be trapped by demonic enthrallment – and so he stared down past Kakashi’s face, often around his chest. Sometimes Gai looked at Kakashi’s feet when he was particularly worried that Kakashi was taking things seriously and might actually start a fight.

Today, Gai was fixated down at Kakashi’s kneecaps while grinning and still giving his relatively new obsession – the thumb’s up – a sign of positivity and approval in Gai’s mind.

So, of course, Kakashi told him: “You should leave. I don’t want to see you.”

Kakashi turned around and resumed packing, unapologetically leaving Gai behind. He was almost certain that his ‘eternal rival’ would do no such thing as depart his apartment, but he could always hope. 

He was tossing a Haitian hummingbird amulet into his suitcase when Gai started pulling out frozen fruit from Kakashi’s fridge and poured almond milk into the blender – and just like that – he was noisily making a smoothie and cheerfully making himself at home.

_I’m going to have to explain so much shit to Iruka._

But, then again… 

Kakashi glanced up with both eyes to consider Maito Gai. 

They had been together through countless wars and revolutions, attended an astonishing number of parties and peace treaties, saved damsels and the damned in every country across the planet. He was often brusque with the man, and he tended to shove him away – sometimes physically – with far more force than necessary. 

And yet… Gai was relentless in pursuing friendship with Kakashi, even if it seemed one-sided most of the time.

Suddenly, Gai glanced back at him, having felt the weight of Kakashi’s demonically-aided stare. 

On instinct, Kakashi shut his demon eye and looked down at his luggage, embarrassed that he had been caught contemplating the odd immortal being in his apartment. 

“Leave me alone,” Kakashi warned again, keeping his tone flat.

“I _know_ you care for me, Eternal Rival!” Gai exclaimed in a sing-song voice, pouring his smoothie into one of Kakashi’s only two glasses. He leaned across the kitchen bar with his enormous body. Kakashi could hear the smugness in his voice as Gai declared with unashamed pleasure: “Do not pretend otherwise!”

“I hate you,” Kakashi said instantly in response.

He followed the blunt statement up with silence as he crouched down and began to better organize his lone piece of luggage, brimming full of all his earthly belongings.

Gai didn’t even try to hold back his laughter. The sound was both remarkably pleasant – and insanely grating – and Kakashi wanted suddenly to high-kick Gai through the ceiling. He refused to look at the other man, his shoulders growing increasingly tense, his expression turning sour.

“You cannot fool me, rival,” Gai explained with cheery calm. “When you saved me in Normandy from those Nazis, I knew in my heart that you were not just my Eternal Rival – but also my very best friend – for all of time!”

Definitely unamused, Kakashi snorted, shaking his head back and forth in irritation.

“I only saved you because you were stupidly shielding that kid from Nebraska.”

 _That_ comment offended Gai quite a lot, because, abruptly, Kakashi heard Gai slam a ridiculously strong fist down on the expensive granite kitchen countertop. 

“He was a very good man, Kakashi!” As Gai spoke, he became markedly louder and sharper, nearly tempting Kakashi to look over at his expression, but he held himself back and in control... unlike Gai, who sounded like he was admonishing Kakashi for his own behavior from seventy-five years ago. “I check in on his great-grandchildren all the time. I will have you know that Mary just got into college!”

Kakashi didn’t reply, which, for Gai, was a good enough of a sign that he understood he was in the wrong.

But the actual reason that Kakashi didn’t respond wasn’t his capitulation on the topic. Honestly, Kakashi wasn’t opposed to saving other creatures with shorter life-spans than his own, not at all. In fact, he frequently saved humans in war and peace alike, though he did admittedly kill a good many as well. 

However, the real reason behind his silence was the same single reason that he had saved Gai in 1944… and innumerable other times throughout the last two hundred fifty years.

_Kakashi wasn’t sure if Gai was invincible… if he was unkillable._

Immortality as a curse seemed to mean that a human couldn’t die: their body didn’t age and continued to function with utter perfection.

It was a rare enough curse that Kakashi had never met a human with it.

Until Gai.

And he simply didn’t know if the immortality curse meant Gai would survive – well… – well, something like being shot point-blank in the head.

Due to his frighteningly accurate demon eye, he still could see the exact scene that Maito Gai was referencing: the horrendous cacophony of artillery, gunfire, dying men on the beaches of France echoed exactly in his ears as if he was _still_ running up through the sand after the human man who he had met two centuries prior. 

Kakashi had lost track of Gai in the initial moments after their boat had hit the shore. He had spent the first few minutes of the invasion supernaturally dodging bullets and artillery shells before he had spotted his huge friend higher up the embankment, going towards a Nazi fortification. His little lost puppy of a human follower, the blonde-haired boy from Nebraska who admired Gai more than Jesus Himself, trailed foolishly behind him.

Kakashi could almost hear his single solitary thought radiate through time.

_Gai can’t die here. Not this way. Not here, not now._

He had jumped up to the Nazi guard post – and furiously punched through the side, destroying a whole wall of reinforced concrete in an instant.

Kakashi had been utterly surprised to find Gai struggling in hand-to-hand combat with a snarling Nazi soldier, the Nebraska kid sprawled, unconscious and bleeding, on the floor. The Nazi who had been manning the machine gun had just turned to level a shaking pistol at Gai’s shiny black hair from less than a foot away – the same moment that Kakashi burst right through the wall like an elephant crashing and trampling mercilessly through the forest.

It was one of the rare moments where, in a moment of weakness, Gai had glanced over at Kakashi and _not_ remembered to look away from his demon eye.

Gai’s adrenaline-reddened face, the black magic chains rotating incessantly over his visible skin, had gone completely slack, and his whole green-aflame body relaxed to the point that he nearly stumbled forward into the Nazi who he was grappling with.

In response, Kakashi had punched the machine gunner with the pistol so hard that the man’s head entirely _vanished_.

He was even less tolerant of the other Nazi, the one suddenly gripping Gai’s throat. 

Seventy-five years later, as Kakashi stared down at his small collection of material possessions crowded together in a single suitcase, he couldn’t avoid the memory of the Nazi’s bones being ground to nothing between his remorseless fingertips. He’d caught the young German man by the throat with one hand – and forcefully pressed together his index finger and thumb, meeting the tips of them _through_ the soldier’s spine.

He spared a glance down at his fingertips, encased in black leather gloves.

“Thank you for that,” Gai suddenly said, disturbing Kakashi from his thoughts. He peered upwards at the immortal human clad in a silly black track suit – and was surprised to find that Gai was looking peculiarly serious, a rather strange shade for him. “For saving me.”

Kakashi could only nod, feeling the smallest flush of embarrassment cross over him. 

“Are you going somewhere, rival?”

He wanted to shrug off the question, ignore Gai, leave his apartment, disappear before Gai could catch up with him. Certainly, the immortal man would find him soon enough: Gai had become incredibly efficient in locating him, particularly as technology progressed and it became more and more difficult not to leave a virtual trace of one’s movements. 

But, instead of running away, Kakashi said in a low voice, not looking up, “I’m moving in with a werewolf and the Nine-Tailed Fox on the western side of the city.”

He wanted – suddenly and desperately – to see Gai’s expression, but he was too uncomfortable with the impulse and stared intently at his things shoved together in the suitcase.

Gai was effortlessly boisterous, anyway, saving him from discomfort. 

“The Nine-Tailed Fox who destroyed the city twelve years ago?” the immortal mused, humming loudly, clearly holding his chin in contemplation. “And a werewolf who he is keeping captive?”

Kakashi’s one-eyed gaze shot up to meet Gai’s surprised black eyes. “No, he’s not a hostage,” he corrected firmly. “Iruka adopted the Fox.” He didn’t blush under Gai’s scrutinizing look, but he did feel flustered, and he found himself suddenly saying, trying to explain the strange situation, “He invited me to stay with them.”

Gai’s bushy black eyebrows went high on his forehead. “But the Nine-Tailed Fox has never been kind to other creatures. What has changed?” Then he appeared as if the most amazing idea had just occurred to him, and he made a huge fist in front of himself, seizing on his new thought. “Oh! Do you think it is tutelage of the werewolf, this Iruka? Has Iruka tamed the beast?”

Trying to describe how Iruka had fussed over the Nine-Tailed Fox’s vegetable intake would take so much more energy than Kakashi could offer at the present moment.

So he simply shrugged and zipped up his suitcase, standing with easy grace. “He’s going by Naruto now. He’s taken the form of a boy; he’s attending school.” As Kakashi watched Gai nod contemplatively, he shifted his hands into his jeans pockets and surveyed his apartment. “You can crash here whenever you want the next year. Everything’s paid for.” He spared a glance back at Gai, who was looking quite pleased with the invitation. “You can have the blender.”

Unfortunately, however, Gai took advantage of the brief eye contact and asked Kakashi with profound and honest interest, “Will I get to meet Iruka and Naruto?”

Kakashi almost _did_ blush, then, if only because he wasn’t sure how to explain what he and Iruka were doing… or what he was thinking after three hundred years of solitude… or why his dumbass self was taking the risk of residing with _The_ Nine-Tailed Fox to care for a relatively short-lived werewolf.

Instead, he wondered aloud, continuing to look at Gai as if he was unbothered by the question or the present situation, “Have you ever lived with anyone?” The last part of his inquiry didn’t need to be finished… _since you were cursed with immortality several hundred years ago._

Gai stared blankly at Kakashi for several good seconds before bursting into a remarkable bout of loud laughter. Based on the man’s reaction, Kakashi felt as if he had asked a ridiculous question, but his aggravation was soon building, and he was just about to cut off the other man, when Gai announced in truly warm amusement, “Well, I _have_ been married eight times, Kakashi! Did you think I was living separately from my spouses?”

There was no restraining the shock that rapidly saturated Kakashi’s face. He realized that he was looking in open but silent disbelief at Gai for longer than was considered appropriate when Gai started laughing again and ran a large hand through his shining black hair. 

“Kakashi, did you not know I was married? I have sent you invitations to all of my weddings!”

“No, I... I didn’t know,” Kakashi muttered, glancing away to study the wood floor of his apartment. Unexpected shame was twisting and turning up through his insides. He had honestly not known that Gai had ever had a single sexual partner, let alone married eight different people. 

Kakashi was slowly beginning to understand what had happened: Maito Gai was the pinnacle of etiquette. He had been sending paper invitations like any good late eighteenth century man – and had just been assuming Kakashi didn’t care enough to attend his weddings. 

Another sharp, painful thought stabbed through him: _Wait, do I still have that mailbox in New York City from 1780? Has Gai been sending me things there? What else has he sent me??_

As if he wasn’t registering Kakashi’s growing guilt and confusion, Gai began to talk incessantly, halfway swooning, halfway roused to celebration: “I met my first wife in 1790! She was a French aristocrat, I saved her from a mob. We married in London!” Gai laughed slightly to himself, a bit more sorrow in the sound, before he continued in a wistful tone, “My first husband was my fourth spouse. He was one of the first African-American men to enlist in their Civil War…” 

Kakashi’s single-eyed sharpened on the other man as Gai noticeably deflated, leaning heavily on the kitchen counter, looking off into the distance. Even as his hand tightened around his empty glass, Gai concluded softly, “He died in my arms in the summer of 1864, saying he was glad to fight beside me. We couldn’t even marry back then, but I still gave him a ring and promised to be with him, until death do us part, and…”

Suddenly trailing off, Gai moved to clean the blender, visibly lost in his thoughts. 

It was strange to see Gai sad.

But that was the point of the immortality curse, Kakashi realized abruptly.

_Everyone he loves will die before him. In battle, of disease, old age._

He thought of the Nine-Tailed Fox, this Naruto boy, and added to himself, _Or they’ll be reincarnated and forget both themselves and him._

It suddenly made a bit more sense why Maito Gai had latched onto him two hundred and fifty years ago: there were few creatures that lived as long as vampires, and Kakashi was certainly one of the better survivalists of his kind, having outlasted a good number of his peers. 

It wasn’t that Kakashi avoided danger – in contrast, he was often running head-first into fighting, determined to make a difference in this world with the skills that he had. 

He could admit to himself that he loved danger. 

He loved taking risks; he loved seeing if he could survive yet one more horrible thing.

And Kakashi _had_ survived three hundred years of truly horrific experiences.

Of course, there were plenty of decades where Kakashi sat out of war and politics and instead read romance novels, but he was always attracted to action – and bloodshed.

But sometimes, admittedly, his vampirism was a real disadvantage. Although he no longer caught on fire when out in the sun, his skin evidently having built up some resistance to sunlight, he suffered a whole host of other indignities specific only to his kind.

One of those was his need for blood… his love of danger, his love of blood. In fact, he hadn’t been with Gai during the American Civil War, known Gai’s husband, seen the human man die – all because that war had been such an unbelievable bloody mess. 

He had left the war after losing himself during a particularly bad battle, one where thousands had been killed over the span of a few days. Such a sudden death toll had not happened in the recent human history – the new technology of fast-loading guns and long-range artillery meant hundreds of human soldiers dying quickly and messily. 

Thanks to Obito’s eye, an unwanted memory flashed through his vision: in the heated hell of a battlefield, he was standing alone, loose and lazy, _drenched_ in bright red blood. He was licking droplets of blood dripping off his long fingers, staring down at the dying soldier desperately trying to crawl away from him. The man was whimpering pathetic little sounds, straining in his suffering. 

_Those pained pitiful noises made Kakashi crazy._

He descended on the man, tearing out the soldier’s throat with far more force than was necessary, opening up wet muscle and biting down into the writhing jugular vein itself.

Palming his scarred demon eye in irritation, Kakashi angrily shook himself back to the present.

He hadn’t fought in the American Civil War – and several other wars, before and after it – because of that exact experience – if there was too much bloodshed, he would lose himself – he couldn’t restrain his blood-drunk self with such much human mortality hanging thick and damp like heavy humidity.

Glancing up at Gai, he saw the other man was considering Kakashi’s open balcony door and was looking out across the crowded cityscape. Even with his black track suit, absurd hair-cut, and massive muscular body, Maito Gai looked like a severe stone statue in Kakashi’s studio apartment. He rarely stayed so still – it was uncomfortable to witness the immortal man unmoving, standing in place, silently thinking to himself. 

_Shit. Should I be more concerned about him?_

“Yeah, you can meet them,” Kakashi suddenly said, surprising himself.

Gai’s brooding gaze turned back to him – and brightened almost instantaneously.

“Eternal Rival!” Gai declared enthusiastically, immediately shrugging off the shroud of darkness surrounding him. His grin went wide, showing all his teeth. “I will bring Iruka a bottle of a wine – do you think he will accept one of the Bordeaux bottles I saved from Paris before the War?” Amusement slipped over Kakashi before he knew it: Gai was already walking towards the front door, checking his pants pockets for his wallet and cell phone. “I will be back in a few days, I have to go to my bank in London to get it, but it will be worth it, if Iruka likes wine.” 

Gai stopped suddenly at the apartment door and turned sharply back around to stare at Kakashi, who straightened at the new intense attention. 

“Are you planning on marrying him?”

Kakashi’s cheeks went fully pink. 

He stared uselessly at his one and only friend. He actually had to force his demon eye to stay shut as panic overwhelmed him upon hearing the question.

_Marry Iruka…? We barely know each other!_

Yet his brain betrayed him completely rightaway. Kakashi suddenly thought about Iruka clinging to him, gasping in his ear, digging his nails into Kakashi’s shoulders; he could still taste the sharp sweat and lemon soap on Iruka’s neck, could feel the blood pulsing and pouring down the the man’s jugular vein; he saw Iruka’s wolf body launching through the air, tackling the other werewolf, trying to defend Kakashi… like Kakashi wasn’t infinitely stronger, like he actually needed and deserved Iruka’s sacrifice, like he was something precious to be protected.

Kakashi’s head was spinning. He felt a bit faint.

But Gai didn’t notice at all as he rambled onwards, his expression darkening, his eyebrows increasingly drawing together in concern: “If you are, I will need to go to Guangzhou to get the wedding present I have been saving for you. I bought it in in 1839, but it should still be in good condition. If it is not, I will need to have it restored, but it should have survived. I last checked on it in 1946, but I am now realizing that was some time ago.”

Instead of waiting for Kakashi’s answer, Gai waved dismissively into the air and opened the door, not looking back. “I will go get it – and the bottle of wine. I will be back in a few days! Please do not let Naruto destroy the city while I am gone. I am most interested in meeting your werewolf, Kakashi!” As Gai disappeared into the hallway, he called backwards in encouragement: “Keep the world safe, Eternal Rival! And remember to rest!”

Kakashi stared at his partially open door for a long time.

At some point, he closed it.

He eventually sat down on his bed and stared down at his gloved hands.

_Could Iruka and I… Could we…_

He didn’t realize the sun had set until a werewolf howled in the distance.

Kakashi opened up his demon eye on instinct. He saw the world outside his window – and it was full of monsters, himself included. He hadn’t seen his reflection in three hundred years, but he knew what he looked like: a desolate silver-haired figure, starving for human sustenance. 

_What does Iruka see in me…? How could he like my scent? Is it not the smell of death?_

But, as he thought about it, Kakashi wondered if Iruka had strange instincts, truly strange instincts. 

The werewolf had gone after the Nine-Tailed Fox, apparently without a worry in his heart for his own safety, even as he felt a wild concern that the young youkai was alone out in the world fending for himself. 

He recalled the true desperation that Iruka had expressed in the morning about not making Naruto breakfast… and that Iruka was only relieved by the Fox’s reassurance of fancy ramen.

_How can such a sincere creature be so confusing?_

Kakashi was secretly rather scared of what was happening to him, of who Iruka was, of what might happen between them… but he was too intrigued to stop himself.

After all, he did love danger.

He would survive this, too.

Probably.

Maybe.


	6. Chapter 6

Kakashi stared into the darkness – and saw everything.

Several hundred werewolves, a hundred different demons, two dozen youkai… They were the easiest to spot, even from a distance, their spiritual energies glowing and distinct.

But there were shapeshifters, too: famous monsters taking on humanoid form for the moment, living pretend lives in the big city on the edge of the world. 

Just there – the legendary world serpent – all fine feathers and sharp scales – here, in the city, she was a café barista making a chai latte for a late-night customer, smiling slow and easy at him, like she wasn’t holding the earth together underneath his feet with sheer willpower.

And over there – the golden hind – the doe with golden antlers made into myth, paired with the Greek goddess, Artemis – here, in the city, they had kept an existence between genders, beautiful and refined, working as a low-level accountant in a large law firm, eating kale salad in the break-room, watching Netflix on their smart phone. 

And… on the western side of the city, there was the Demon Fox, the Nine-Tailed Fox.

The one and only.

Kakashi could see the Fox through the window, as he was, as he really was.

He was enormous, engulfing the entire apartment in rolling orange-red flame. His face was long and angular, terribly fox-like, but it was a familiar sight to Kakashi, having seen him on numerous occasions before this one. The Nine-Tailed Fox was relaxed, though, a truly unusual look on the legendary creature: he seemed to be lounging on the backwall of the apartment, mimicking his vessel, his flesh and skin, his mortal body, the boy named Naruto.

Naruto was laughing uproariously at the exaggerated antics of soap opera characters. He was slapping his knees, his bright blue eyes closed tight. He looked too much like a kid enjoying life; it was surreal considering the sharp grinning teeth of the massive red-flame Nine-Tailed Fox hovering through him and around him. 

And there was Iruka Umino, not looking at the television but at Naruto. He was laughing and smiling, too. He was clearly deeply pleased with the boy’s happiness; he leaned over and ruffled Naruto’s blonde hair, making a quick cheerful remark, resting his arm on the back of the couch. 

He was a werewolf, that was obvious in his animalistic spiritual energy. Obito’s eye, the demon eye, let Kakashi see Iruka Umino as he really was: a large brown-furred wolf joyful and attentive to his packmate, his protective ward. In his hidden spiritual wolf form, Iruka was unknowingly leaning full-body against the Nine-Tailed Fox’s fantastically oversized right paw. The difference in the size of their paws, their claws, was so disturbing that Kakashi felt the strange urge to burst into the apartment and tear Iruka away from the incredible threat that _he was willingly embracing_.

But the Nine-Tailed Fox was _also_ embracing Iruka, there was no denying that.

The Fox’s spiritual energy was intricately intertwined with Iruka’s wolf form, looking like scarlet-red droplets hanging onto the tips of his dark fur.

Before abandoning his post on the rooftop across from Iruka’s apartment building, Kakashi dared to look down at his own hands which were, as always, hidden behind leather gloves.

The ghostly white spiritual energy was nothing new, but…

He felt his slowly beating heart ache as he saw what he feared: a small speck of crimson in the center of his left palm.

Even from the brief encounter this morning with the Nine-Tailed Fox, with Naruto… Kakashi was being changed… he was changing.

He wanted to know if Iruka Umino was affecting him, too, but werewolves didn’t work that way. They didn’t leave behind residual spiritual energy, not like youkai and demons and legendary creatures.

No, werewolves were known to ruin lives.

They broke hearts.

Kakashi tried not to be unsettled by the reminder of a far-distant memory. The fleeting words given to him by an old vampire, her face hidden by the familiar white-and-red porcelain mask. He had the same sort of mask in his suitcase, buried under three shirts and a pair of jeans, ready and waiting for him to use whenever he needed to wear it again.

_You want to court death? You want to end it all? Find yourself a wolf and fall in love with it. They live fast, they die young, they have no concept of risk. You’ll be killed by it, or you’ll die for it, or you’ll watch it die and then kill yourself out of loneliness._

His thoughts somewhere else, Kakashi pressed on the intercom for Iruka’s apartment, said in monotone, “It’s me,” and walked indoors and up the stairs after Iruka chirped, “Oh, good! Kakashi’s here!” back at him through the speaker and let him inside.

_Is that what I’m doing with Iruka? Am I seeking death? Or am I trying to live again?_

He wasn’t sure.

He also wasn’t sure that he cared enough to figure out the difference.

Iruka Umino opened the door wide to his apartment. His smile was just as wide, his dark eyes lighting up in pleasure upon seeing Kakashi. “Welcome home!” Iruka declared with true warmth radiating from his words and very being. He ushered Kakashi inside, nearly taking his suitcase from him but deciding at the last moment to tug familiarly on Kakashi’s coat sleeve. 

“Another beautiful coat,” Iruka murmured, glancing up at Kakashi through his eyelashes. 

Kakashi tried not to blush at the pretty sight – or Iruka’s naïve kindness.

_You know you’re welcoming a vampire to stay in your home, don’t you…?_

Having changed positions as Kakashi walked into the apartment, Naruto was now sitting up on his knees on the couch, looking at Kakashi over the back of it. When he caught Kakashi’s single-eyed gaze, he ducked his head a little, but then he suddenly sat up straighter and announced, “We already ate dinner. There’s instant ramen in the cabinet.”

Kakashi stared, taken aback by the Nine-Tailed Fox’s unexpected generosity. 

This same youkai had destroyed the city – or, rather, a third of it – just twelve years ago.

That was only mere moments ago… at least, that’s how it seemed to long-lived Kakashi.

_So Iruka is changing him, just as he’s changing Iruka._

“Thank you, I’m fine,” Kakashi replied tonelessly. Naruto perked an eyebrow at his rejection but shrugged soon after and turned around to watch his show. He was a bit more restless than he had been before Kakashi entered, but he didn’t look back at the two adults, momentarily leaving them staring at each other in silence. 

After appearing at a loss about what to say for a few seconds, Iruka smiled suddenly at him. “You should watch _Oh My Shinobi!_ with us. It’s our favorite show, we watch it every day after we eat dinner.”

Nodding numbly, Kakashi left his suitcase and shoes by the front door. He followed Iruka out of instinct, watching the werewolf reoccupy his spot on the couch. He himself sunk down on the brown-upholstered recliner – and physically startled when it automatically flung him backwards, the footrest swinging upwards without him adjusting it. 

Kakashi realized that he must have made some sort sound of surprise, because Naruto – the Nine-Tailed Fox! – giggled at his reaction and exclaimed, “It’s super broken! I keep telling Iruka-sensei we should throw it away, but he says he loves it, so we’re keeping it.”

Glancing to his right with his good eye at Iruka, Kakashi was a bit amused to see the werewolf become flustered in response to Naruto’s statement. “It’s been a very good chair,” Iruka explained stiffly, seeming quite offended on the recliner’s behalf. “There’s no reason to throw it away.”

Of course, Kakashi – and apparently also Naruto – disagreed with him, seeing that the recliner was badly broken, but, considering how attached Iruka was to the piece of furniture, Kakashi wasn’t about to suggest tossing the chair into the garbage, and neither was Naruto. 

Although it was rather awkward at first, the three of them relaxed enough to watch the old-model flat-screen T.V. showing _Oh My Shinobi!_ without feeling too uncomfortable. With his demon eye closed, Kakashi could almost pretend that Iruka and Naruto were simply a father-son pair enjoying late night television at the end of a long day. But, unfortunately for him, he recognized all too well what they both really were. He couldn’t avoid their identities of youkai and werewolf any more than he could ignore that he himself was a vampire. 

Plus there was the lingering tension of the Nine-Tailed Fox’s true form wanting to emerge… and the slightly unpleasant, unfamiliar smell of wet dog or, rather, wet werewolf.

Kakashi was too on edge to enjoy the T.V. show, even though he was intrigued by some of the complicated relationship dynamics occurring on screen. 

He found himself studying Iruka and Naruto out of the corner of his one eye. 

They looked so normal… but…

He had seen Iruka Umino on the hunt in his own studio apartment: the werewolf likely would have looked terrifying to a lesser creature, but, to Kakashi, he had seemed like a hint of challenge. He was something unexpected and unknown; he was something that Kakashi had never encountered before.

_What sort of werewolf dares break into a vampire’s home?_

It was almost absurd: it was vampires who smashed through spaces when they invaded them without being invited. To have a werewolf imitate what vampires did - well, it wasn’t something that Kakashi had experienced before, and he had been in existence for more than three hundred years. 

He had expected the fearless wolf to go for his throat, rip out muscle and veins, cast the wallpaper red with blood.

But, instead, Iruka had slammed into him with two huge paws, knocked him to the ground, and – then -

Kakashi realized he was staring not at the T.V. but solely at Iruka as he finished his thought.

_Iruka kissed him._

Casually glancing at Kakashi to see if he was enjoying the show, Iruka noticed Kakashi’s heavy stare directed just at him. Instead of shooting him a dirty look or demanding what he meant by such an obvious leer, Iruka’s scarred cheeks dusted pale pink. 

Barely trying to hide his flattered smile, Iruka looked back at the screen without chastising Kakashi.

Firmly reminding himself that he had survived two dozen revolutions and even a larger number of international wars, Kakashi willed himself to endure the next half-hour of T.V. – and then the rather lengthy ritual of convincing Naruto to go to bed, then stay in his bedroom, then stop using his phone in bed, then stop wandering out of the bedroom looking for snacks, then finally passing out properly and fully.

After giving a sigh of relief, Iruka’s shoulders slumped down, and he turned around to consider Kakashi sitting on the arm of the broken recliner.

Without saying a thing, Iruka walked by him and gathered his suitcase, wheeling it down the hallway and into his bedroom. 

Kakashi wordlessly followed him, trying not to be overwhelmed.

He stepped aside and let Iruka close the door – and then lock the door.

Before Kakashi could raise his eyebrows in question at the move, Iruka dropped the caretaker aura and caught him by the shoulder and neck, pulling him down into a fearfully strong kiss, one that betrayed supernatural strength and absolutely no sign of restraint.

Of course, Kakashi could have resisted, pulled away, but he was responding in an instant, deepening the kiss by parting his lips so Iruka could best have his way with him.

He wasn’t sure where to put his hands, but he found them going for Iruka’s waist, something that Iruka must have liked if his dark moan into Kakashi’s mouth was any indication.

He only realized that Iruka was guiding him by pushing him towards the bed when he noticed that they were moving away from the door. Even though he was truly relishing the deep kissing, Kakashi wasn’t about to have their first time happen this quickly, this way, without speaking.

So he stopped allowing Iruka to control his movements, which meant that Iruka suddenly felt the full force of Kakashi’s strength, which made for an uncomfortable few moments. 

Peering up at him with unabashed confusion filling his face, Iruka’s kiss-bruised lips slid down into a concerned frown. “What’s wrong?” he asked, so simply and so sweetly that Kakashi felt more like a villain than he ever had during the whole last decade.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” Kakashi said immediately, which was absolutely not the reason that he had stopped Iruka from directing them towards the bed.

But it seemed to work for Iruka, whose brown eyes lost their sharpness, instead becoming soft and sensitive. He glanced restlessly over Kakashi’s pale face, appearing increasingly concerned. Just as Kakashi was beginning to feel sick that he was causing the werewolf such worry, Iruka said something that he would have _never_ expected – which immediately made him flush full crimson from his neck to the tips of his ears.

“It’s okay, I can top tonight. I’ll be gentle with you, I promise.”

Utterly unable to control himself, Kakashi made a garbled sound somewhere between his throat and his chest out of pure bewildered shock and embarrassment. He dropped his hands from Iruka’s waist and instantly swept them up to his face, totally unable to restrain his blush from flooding his features. He went to step away from Iruka, unwilling to stay near him as he ran through his humiliation, but the werewolf apparently thrived on ruthless compassion, because Iruka suddenly added with sincere concern darkening his tone:

“Please don’t feel self-conscious! I won’t stare at you – if you want, I can wear a blindfold!”

Absolutely breaking his brain into bits, the unwanted but wonderful vision of Iruka – lustful and breathless, his scarred brown skin shining with sweat, his beautiful muscular body twisting in bed, black silk covering his expressive eyes and tied tight over his lovely long hair – conquered the last remaining piece of Kakashi’s mind.

He waved a hand in the air, gesturing for Iruka to stop, which thankfully the werewolf did.

“I…” Kakashi started to explain himself, his virginity, but, within speaking a single word, he realized he was never, ever going to be able to say everything speeding through his head. Instead, he swallowed down his discomfort and steeled himself for admitting a half-truth. “I want to take things slow between us.”

When only silence greeted his statement, Kakashi parted his fingers and looked at Iruka with his single good eye. He immediately dropped his hands as he found Iruka on the verge of bursting into tears, something incredibly obvious and visible by the watery wave of his brown eyes. 

Before he could say anything, though, Iruka confessed in a pained low voice, “I am so sorry, Kakashi, I just can’t handle myself around you. You’re completely right, I’ve been pushing us too much, I keep forgetting to ask you what you want.” Iruka made an aggravated face at his own words and fiercely corrected himself, “No, that’s not right. I’m not forgetting. I’m not thinking about you or what you want. I’m sorry. It’s completely unfair of me.” 

Iruka’s hands were balled into shaking fists at his sides. His scarred face looked like he’d been gutted by a knife, it was so screwed up and anguished. He was so upset that his whole body was trembling from wracking tension. 

Kakashi stared at Iruka. 

He had no idea what to say. He could barely think.

He couldn’t follow what happened next.

Suddenly Iruka was down on his back, flat on the mattress, the wind knocked out of him. He was clutching desperately at Kakashi’s coat, his fingers pulling Kakashi further down to make their bodies grind into each other, to get them even closer together. He was making a high-pitched soft whine in his throat, a begging sound that was driving Kakashi even wilder than he already felt. 

Kakashi found that he’d torn Iruka’s shirt, half of it still on him, leaving only one sleeve intact. Nearly the entirety of Iruka’s scarred chest and abdomen were on fine display in the darkness, the same skin he’d kissed with ardent appreciation on the rooftop of the hotel. He was doing that again, kissing each of the hard-won battle scars, sliding his tongue eagerly across the lines, while his hands made quick work of Iruka’s pants.

He shoved Iruka’s pants down to his knees, his own hand finding Iruka’s lovely hard cock. 

His mind blank, his heart beating at almost human speeds, Kakashi pressed down on Iruka, bringing his mouth to the werewolf’s neck. He kissed there urgently before he gave a hurried confession into Iruka’s skin, “Your impatience turns me on. I like that you take what you want.”

Instantly, Iruka was answering him, heated and shameless: “I want you, I want you so much.”

He bucked up into Kakashi’s hand, desperate for more, for a firmer grip, and Kakashi was so terribly willing to give it to him, tightening his hand around Iruka’s arousal, treasuring the feel of silky intimate skin, Iruka’s achingly hard cock. 

Kakashi could _feel_ Iruka’s blood pumping madly up and down his jugular vein in an excited frenzy to get blood moving throughout his body, to his heart, to his erection, to his brain. Kakashi was dizzy from the wonder of it: he had so little blood in him that the foreign feeling of Iruka’s desperate blood was making him hunger, making him want to break Iruka’s throat open, to sink his teeth into that flesh, to lick up the liquid of life.

He shivered atop Iruka in a truly strange way – he was having to restrain himself, he wanted so badly to have all of Iruka, to make him some insane impossible hybrid of vampire and werewolf and victim, to keep him forever in the throes of passion and pleasure, to have him always making that adorable haunting begging whine –

Iruka responded _very well_ to Kakashi’s shaking body above his own: the werewolf was breathing crazily into Kakashi’s silver hair. He had shoved his hands under Kakashi’s coat and was digging down hard into Kakashi’s shoulders and leaving little crescents of red cuts under his white shirt. His hips were moving off the mattress in frantic desperation, moving _into_ Kakashi’s fist, thrusting upwards into his hand without the slightest hint of humiliation. 

The soft shaking gasp of “Kakashi” was all the warning Kakashi got before Iruka came.

He didn’t have to look down to know that Iruka had certainly just ruined his only other coat – this time with cum and not blood.

But he didn’t care, he didn’t care at all.

Kakashi was back to kissing Iruka, instigating a kiss between them for the first time, which he only realized belatedly. The sudden epiphany inspired him further, driving him to delve deeper into Iruka’s mouth, having never done that before either. In response, Iruka was making peculiar wanton sounds, his half-naked body writhing against Kakashi’s still fully clothed form. He was still forcefully holding onto Kakashi’s shoulders, he was still breathing unstably into Kakashi’s hair.

He pulled back to stare down at Iruka.

For a second, Kakashi thought about keeping his demon eye closed.

But then he opened it, almost instantly dazzling the already dazed werewolf underneath him.

“I want you,” Kakashi admitted in a faint whisper. “I want all of you.”

_Break my heart, Iruka Umino. Ruin my life._

In a truly impressive show of force, Iruka fought the enchantment so he could smile exquisitely up at Kakashi, his pure reckless joy at Kakashi’s confession breaking through the magic.

Iruka had done something similar on the rocks by the river the night before, when he’d struggled through the spell, being so sincerely desperate to reassure Kakashi that he had managed to caress the edge of Kakashi’s coat.

What a werewolf…

What a man. 

_Please, Iruka. Please make me feel something again. ___


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for your patience. I have great plans for our pair and will be updating more regularly.
> 
> Please enjoy. 
> 
>  
> 
> ____

Soon their little family fell into a routine.

Naruto had taken to extracurriculars with increasing zeal since starting his friendship with Sasuke, meaning that family soap opera nights became all the more important bonding time. In between commercials, Naruto would chatter away about what happened at school, how he stood up to bullies, how he was teased for being bad at math (“but it’s okay, Iruka-sensei! Sasuke’s a genius at Algebra! he tutors me everyday!”), that Anime Club was _just so awesome_. Naruto particularly emphasized how he couldn’t wait for Iruka to come to Parent-Teacher Conference Day the following week: he had so much to show off, and he just knew the teachers would tell Iruka that he was a great student, they would tell Iruka that Naruto was charming and perfect, that he was going to be the best of the best.

Iruka listened to Naruto with a full heart and a smile on his face every night. He also secretly enjoyed their time together for a different reason – because their new housemate, Kakashi, had taken up a new perpetual position in the broken recliner. The other man seemed to practically live in the chair: he was there in the morning when Iruka woke up, never once lingering in the bedroom overnight, and he sat down in the same spot after escorting Iruka home from work, staying there until Naruto went to sleep. 

Every night, Kakashi silently trailed after Iruka into what Iruka kept imagining was _their_ bedroom – even though he had never once seen Kakashi sleep there – or anywhere else for that matter. In fact, Iruka had to admit that he rarely saw the man lay down at all… except for when they were fooling around, which they did… well, every night after Naruto went to bed.

He wasn’t especially sure why Kakashi preferred kissing and touching over penetrative sex, but Iruka felt too high and pleased with life to complain. He had learned just where to lick Kakashi to make the other man’s hips twitch; he could consistently provoke a certain low moan from Kakashi when he held both their slick erections in one hand and kissed the vampire’s neck at the same time. Somewhere, in the back of his mind, Iruka wondered once or twice if Kakashi would ever want to go down on _him_ , but he shrugged off the idea almost as soon as it spun its way through his thoughts.

Maybe vampires couldn’t give head because of their fangs? It _was_ fragile skin… and normal human teeth could be painful… so fangs must hurt terribly, which was why Kakashi avoided the sex act altogether?

Their new life together wasn’t entirely sex, though.

Every morning when Iruka made Naruto breakfast and lunch, he watched Kakashi catch up on the news – first in print media form, a collection of high-quality newspapers from other countries, and then in digital format on his cell phone, flicking through every sort of social media in existence. 

Although Iruka talked rather endlessly to him and with Naruto in the mornings, he found that Kakashi tended to keep to short answers and avoid eye contact with both of them. It was strangely not offensive for some elusive reason that Iruka couldn’t place. Unexpectedly, Kakashi’s permanent presence in the living room felt like a patriarchal figure waiting to praise his doting wife and send his son off to school. Instead of feeling insulted that the other man didn’t flutter about the place trying to help him out, Iruka had become quite fond of Kakashi’s cool stability in the chaotic whirlwind of their family getting the day started. 

Without fail, Kakashi religiously completed a certain number of mundane rituals – all of which he started doing the very first morning after he arrived in the apartment. 

Every morning when Naruto ran into the corridor, lunchbox in hand and bookbag on his back, Kakashi always stood up and hung about the doorway, watching as Iruka hugged Naruto and waved goodbye to the boy when he ran down the stairs and off to school. He never said anything to Naruto, leaving it all to Iruka, who poured out his soul every morning in excessive encouragement, but Kakashi always gave Naruto a single slow raise of his hand in farewell.

Then, as if imitating a lost love-sick puppy, Kakashi would follow Iruka around the apartment, wordlessly observing him get ready for _his_ day. Sometimes the other man would lean against the bathroom sink while Iruka showered, listening to him sing or talk about Naruto or work or silly things he’d seen online. Other times, Kakashi would stick his entire head inside the shower curtain and blink away water from his single normal eye, totally unmindful of the spray, seemingly innocently interested in watching Iruka bathe.

Although Iruka knew that Kakashi had stalked him before they gotten together, he was still surprised the very first day when the vampire had soundlessly escorted him through public transit to his job downtown – all with unerring precision. To make it even more surprising, Kakashi was ceaselessly casual about the whole thing, not providing the slightest suggestion that he felt remorseful for already knowing Iruka’s entire life routine. 

Instead, Kakashi was perfunctory to the point of being unnerving, every day, every night. 

He was awake before Iruka was. He always finished reading just in time see Naruto leave. He followed Iruka around the apartment, watching him get ready, saying very little, and never, ever attempting to get fresh with him.

He rode the subway with Iruka, the two of them sitting together shoulder to shoulder.

He walked Iruka to work – and picked him up from work, repeating the journey in reverse.

Every day, every night with perfect ease.

And Kakashi looked damn gorgeous the whole time. He had shown up the first evening after work with a new coat – a beautiful dark blue wool coat so crisply fit to his slender form that Iruka wondered how he had found such a perfect garment in the first place. Even though Kakashi never ate or drank anything that Iruka offered him (and he offered every morning and every night!), the man seemed to move easily about the apartment as well as the city, never faltering, never looking any paler than usual. His silver hair was still as stunning as the first time Iruka had seen it; his dark eye was just as captivating at the magical red-and-black one that he always kept closed.

In the exhilarating late night hours, when Iruka had Kakashi alone in bed, he relished the rising warm blush on the alabaster-skinned vampire’s face. He loved the looks that Kakashi gave him – wanting, wanton looks – his pale lips parted, wet with his wandering tongue, his dark eye half-lidded and focused only on Iruka. 

Even though he found some enjoyment in work, and tremendous joy in helping Naruto live a good and decent life, it was in the dark of night that Iruka received the most satisfaction. 

Nothing compared to the moments past midnight when scorching-hot pleasure seized Kakashi, made his long limbs shake, turned his pristine white skin pink, all because Iruka was causing him such wondrous sensations – using tongue, lips, fingers, hands, his whole body. He looked forward to those few fleeting seconds where Kakashi threw back his head, exposing the line of his throat, and surrendered to the feelings that Iruka was inspiring deep within him. Kakashi’s soft sighs of pure indulgence made Iruka’s head fuzzy with joy: he couldn’t rest a second at the end of even the worst of days without trying to pull those amazing sounds from the other man.

Of course, Iruka could admit privately to himself, just a little, that he wasn’t sure who Kakashi was – or even what he wanted out of their time together.

The second morning after Kakashi moved in, the vampire had slightly lowered his newspaper, revealing a concerned expression, and asked in a muted tone, “Do you like wine, Iruka?”

Iruka wrinkled his nose, shaking his head in negative. “No, I don’t, actually. I like sake, though.” Suddenly realizing that Kakashi had asked him perhaps the first real question of their relationship, Iruka stopped preparing Naruto’s lunch and tried to keep eye contact with the other man. He asked curiously, maybe a bit too eagerly, “Do you want me to get something for us to drink tonight?”

Kakashi’s single eye had widened in surprise at the suggestion. He kept the newspaper in front of most of his face, the pages covering the entirety of his torso, as he stretched his long legs in front of him in the broken recliner. “No, I don’t drink,” Kakashi replied in an odd, stilted way before dropping his gaze away from Iruka, who was standing still, staring at him from the kitchen. 

Confused and a bit disappointed by the man’s response, Iruka had resumed preparing Naruto’s lunch – but then he quickly noticed Kakashi put aside the newspaper before finishing it. Without saying anything, Kakashi began rapidly typing (texting?) on his cell phone, something he hadn’t done before. There was a pause (a reply?) – then more typing – then another pause (waiting? another reply?) – and then more typing – before Kakashi scrunched his face at something on the screen and then went back to reading the newspaper. 

Over the next week, Kakashi hadn’t messed with his cell phone in the same way, only endless scrolling and opening and closing various apps. He used neither sound notifications nor vibrate; he seemed simultaneously very attached to his phone but also completely disinterested in the object. 

Iruka _never_ had to call him. Kakashi was always there – silent, sure, and constant. 

But there were certain changes that made Iruka worry… small changes, but they were present and undeniable.

Kakashi was getting colder.

He wasn’t getting emotionally colder. In truth, Kakashi’s emotional state didn’t seem to change much at all, never fluctuating in the slightest.

Strangely, so very strangely, Kakashi was _physically_ becoming colder. It was blatantly obvious with the amount of fooling around that they were doing: Iruka’s hands and mouth were on the other man every single night, and he was particularly keen and sensitive to temperature fluctuations as a werewolf. There was no doubt that Kakashi’s core temperature was dropping, and so too the surface of his skin. He was practically freezing, his fingertips like frost as they trailed over Iruka’s scarred naked form. 

But Kakashi didn’t seem perturbed by it, and Iruka wasn’t certain how to bring it up.

Unfortunately, Iruka understood now that he really didn’t know a thing about vampires. From the limited information that he was amassing from living with one, Iruka sorrowfully realized much of his Internet research was complete utter nonsense. It made him worry quite a lot about his earlier research on youkai in trying to understand Naruto. When he finally had a chance, he really needed to ask Kakashi about what he knew about youkai – more particularly, kumiho, other nine-tailed foxes, what Naruto was.

Instead, every night, over and over again, Iruka fell hard for Kakashi, and thought of nothing else but his new lover.

Every night Kakashi gave increasingly more and more attention to Iruka’s neck. The other man enjoyed nuzzling his shoulder and throat, kissing there, licking the sensitive skin. Kakashi often breathed at the junction of Iruka’s shoulder and neck when he came, sending chilled air across Iruka’s flesh, inspiring goosebumps and making Iruka shiver down to his very bones.

But, then, on the tenth night, things went wrong.

Everything went tilted, everything went awry, all at once.

All because –

Iruka was underneath Kakashi, as he often was when they were together; his hands were tearing down into Kakashi’s shoulders through his shirt, desperate to get to the man’s skin, to feel his muscle and bone. He was yet again shamelessly thrusting up into Kakashi, although this time they were still both clothed. Iruka was urgent for more delicious friction between their bodies, moving his hips against the other man’s, forcing Kakashi’s body further down onto his own. He had thrown his head aside, allowing Kakashi access to his treasured location, the soft spot so very close to his jugular vein. He knew that it must do something for the vampire to be so near Iruka’s lifeline, and he loved the way Kakashi fixated, obsessed on it, nearly getting distracted from what was happening much lower with their thighs joining over and over again. 

But Iruka was both strong and persistent: he reached down to grab Kakashi by both his jean-clad hips, grinding their groins together, hissing in relief at the new sensation. He felt his shoulders shaking, he was getting close, he was saying something swift and sentimental, something like – something like –

“Oh, God, yes, only you, only you.”

And then Kakashi bit his neck.

It took Iruka a crazy sharp moment to realize what had happened, but his hands moved automatically, dropping Kakashi’s hips and going straight to the new wound. His jostling moved Kakashi backward, but he wasn’t thinking about that, he was wondering in hazy confusion at the strange pain emanating from his throat. His right hand slapped over the injury, pressing down on instinct, keeping pressure on the small bleeding cuts on the slope of his neck.

After a second, Iruka pulled his fingertips away, still trying to comprehend what was going on. He glanced down in startlingly slow motion at what he suddenly understood was his own fresh scarlet-red blood, shining and wet in the moonlight.

His gaze drifted up to Kakashi’s face.

The other man hadn’t moved off of him; he was still hovering bodily over Iruka. 

But Kakashi’s body language was all wrong. 

_And his eyes were worse._

Both of them. He had both eyes open. 

Kakashi’s eyes – one dark, one magical red - were locked on Iruka’s bloody fingertips.

His whole face was awash in surprise. He looked like the first man to discover the atom, the first person to notice they could navigate by the stars. Kakashi was so visibly stunned that he had become unearthly: his pink-flushed skin had lost all of its color, leaving his flesh fearfully bone-white in hue. His silver hair and dark clothing made the look all the more vivid and contrasting.

_Iruka’s blood was on his lips._

Before Iruka could duck his head and avoid contact with the enchanting eye that Kakashi always kept shut around him, the enthrallment violently overcame him -

He went totally limp, his bloody fingers dropping down onto his chest.

Then – Kakashi vanished.

Trying to regain his senses in the following few seconds, Iruka looked desperately around for the other man, seeking him out in the shadows of the room. But, no, Kakashi was gone, he was utterly and completely gone, leaving nothing behind of himself but his suitcase. He hadn’t made a single sound during his abrupt departure, but it was easy to tell how he’d left. He hadn’t closed the bedroom window behind him; only a moment later, a sudden biting winter wind whipped through the room in his wake.

Head spinning, blood leaking from two tiny wounds on his neck, Iruka worked to bury himself under the covers, unthinkingly hiding from the cold. He couldn’t force himself to move and close the window. He only stared at it, a strange new void opening up deep within him.

It only got worse.

Kakashi didn’t return home for days.

The first two days alone made Iruka uneasy, truly and wholly uneasy. He admittedly enjoyed spending more time with Naruto, their soap opera dates going later than normal since Iruka no longer had someone to cuddle afterwards in bed. But when Iruka closed Naruto’s door and went back to his own room, he stood alone, staring at the window that Kakashi had flung himself out of so swiftly he hadn’t even been seen leaving.

Although he detested working while distracted, Iruka lost himself in the hardships of cleaning hotel rooms, becoming mechanical in removing trash, gathering sheets and towels, disinfecting surfaces, vacuuming the floors, among so many other thoughtless but necessary tasks. He felt especially despondent when he walked alone to the subway. He was always reluctant to make room for other men and women to sit next to him; he wanted one certain distinct person beside him, a man whose presence he increasingly missed with more and more of himself.

On the fourth night alone in the darkness of his room, Iruka slipped out of bed and kneeled in front of Kakashi’s suitcase. The luggage was partially unzipped with the slightest edge of a shirt peeking through. Even though much of the apartment still contained the soft scent of Kakashi, the vampire’s smell was most concentrated in his suitcase. 

Iruka believed deeply in privacy, but…

He tugged on the shirt, forcing it through the zipper, until it was all the way out, and then he was holding hold the soft lightweight cotton fabric in his hands. 

When Iruka curled up in bed with Kakashi’s shirt, he hadn’t expected to start crying, but he did, and he was, and he buried his face in the faded scent of his vanished lover, chest heaving in horrific bouts, fingers trembling along the soft lines of the garment. He could feel his ribs protesting the tight ache of tension, the unrelenting waves of emotional hurt tearing over him. He tried squeezing his eyes shut to stop himself from crying, terrible embarrassment overwhelming him, making him wonder what was wrong with him, why was he so desperate for someone he barely knew, a man who clearly thought so very little of him –

He made a pained sound in his throat, trying to force himself from losing himself in his self-destructive loneliness, but it only drove him deeper into the darkness that had been threatening to overtake him for the last few days. 

Barely thinking, Iruka touched the scabbed-over marks on his neck where Kakashi had bite him.

It had been an accident, obviously.

One that scared Kakashi and sent him running.

He started up a mantra in his head: _Come back, please come back._

But Kakashi didn’t come back.

Iruka spent the next two days and nights in a total daze. He ended up giving Naruto money for breakfast and lunch; he fumbled at work, nearly costing the hotel serious money when he misloaded one of the massive washing machines. He fought off a headache with medication, but it only dulled down for a few hours before it came back with a vengeance. 

It was because he was heart-broken. It was stupid, but he couldn’t think the throbbing pain in his temples, wrapping down to his cheekbones, crushing into his eyesockets – that it was anything but his grief trying to kill him in new and inventive ways. He hadn’t cried again, but every night, he held Kakashi’s shirt to his face, trying to recall the full scent of the other man.

It was getting fainter and fainter.

And Iruka could tell what that meant: Kakashi was gone.

A new scar was forming on Iruka’s heart near the enormous black mark from his parents’ death, beside the loss of his hopeful dreams as a teacher, beside his fears for Naruto’s future. He could feel it tearing across his soul, ugly and jagged, winding its way across his ribs and sliding up his spine. He wasn’t getting used to it, but he never got over his scars, he just grew to tolerate the distant but constant anguish of them, all of them.

He’d never had a lover like Kakashi Hatake, and they hadn’t even…

Iruka dreamt about it – what it would be like to have Kakashi behind him, draped over him, unpredictably hot and hard through his clothed skin. 

Kakashi’s hands slipping up Iruka’s shirt, smooth and ceaseless touching his sides. His fingers were warm and soft, tracing battle scars. His hips were flush against Iruka’s ass; he was clothed, too. But Kakashi was impossibly erect, his cock like a sword fresh from the furnace pressed against Iruka, between his thighs, just where Iruka wanted him to be. 

Iruka was panting loudly enough that he grabbed his pillow and was practically suffocating himself with the plush thing, frantic not to be heard. But he was still pushing back against Kakashi, violently gripping the bedsheets trying to keep himself stable. Unbelievably aroused by the feel of Kakashi’s body against his own in such an obvious and intimate position, he could feel his werewolf instincts making all sorts of adjustments without his conscious thought. 

He dipped down, raising his hips, spreading his legs more, wanting to be taken from behind.

Kakashi liked that, so very much: his hands, painfully hot, gripped Iruka’s waist harder, and he brought himself forward, his cock straining through layers of cloth, demanding entrance into Iruka. His mouth was suddenly on Iruka’s back, where Iruka had his largest scar, the scar from his older other lover, the one that betrayed him, the one that taught him to go it alone – and Kakashi was kissing the sunken recess of the old injury, his lips terribly warm, his tongue wet and deliberate dragging up the scar.

Unable to handle any further wondrous torture, Iruka gasped out, barely able to be heard, still face-first into the pillow, “Kakashi – I can’t – please, _please_ just fuck me.”

And – 

And then everything stopped. 

It was like a knife had caught Iruka in the face – again – the realization was so sudden and sharp.

It wasn’t a dream. Not at all. Kakashi was in his bedroom. _Now._ He was behind Iruka, he was thinking about fucking Iruka, he had just heard Iruka beg him to do it, please, God, do it –

\- and, again, just like a week earlier, Kakashi completely vanished right back out the bedroom window that he’d come through.

But, this time, red hot fury roared through Iruka, and he was a wolf a moment later, running through the street, hunting down Kakashi Hatake like he was an evasive prey animal who was definitely going to found and shaken and forced to give some fucking answers _now_.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apparently when I said I would be updating regularly, I meant in 24 hours.
> 
> Please enjoy, my darlings. You are each so very lovely. I see you, and thank you, for your kudos and comments. Inspiration springs eternal from your generous feedback.
> 
>  
> 
> ______

Iruka ran for hours.

He ignored the surprised shouts of humans as well as the snarls and howls of werewolves whose territories he stormed through. In his blind fury, he barely thought about the consequences of such a hard run on his body: he simply didn’t care. Although he knew he was leaving behind the city, going further and further out into the countryside, Iruka never once stopped to consider what he was doing – except for repeating the revised mantra at the very forefront of his thoughts:

_I’m going to get him back, I’m going to get him back._

Sometime during his journey, snow began to fall.

Even in the darkness, Iruka could see with his fine wolf eyes the shower of snowflakes coming down on the farmland surrounding the city. His own coat grew damp and heavy with the stuff, but he shook it off as he ran, never allowing himself a moment to groom himself. He felt rabid in his anger: he could still feel Kakashi across his backside, the man’s hot hands on his hips, that obsessive tongue tantalizing his old scar. 

Every time he thought of it, the recent memory made him mad.

Mad as in furious, mad as in crazy.

He didn’t stop running, even when the start of dawn struck the sky. 

Kakashi’s scent was different, but it was still his, and Iruka knew it on instinct now. The pained loneliness of it was tamped down, reduced, but the softness and the strangeness – that was the same as before – and the scent once again made Iruka feel wild and possessive and careless in his hunt. 

He had risen his head to stare at the snow-heavy clouds when he finally recognized what he had been heading towards, where he had chased Kakashi from the city to the countryside.

It was the memorial to the dead from the Demon Fox attack twelve years ago.

His heart was already pounding impossibly hard in his chest, but Iruka felt it go all the more haywire, his wolf paws losing traction on the snow-slick stones that led up to the huge obelisk out in the open. He tried to control the unsettled struggle of his heart and thoughts, but they were jumbled up in his determination to find Kakashi, and Iruka found himself stumbling more on his suddenly unsteady wolf legs, nearly falling face-first into the well-worn path by the monument.

But he caught himself – because there – _there was Kakashi Hatake!_

The man was not clad in his usual coat, which was damnably confusing: he was always wearing a coat, and now, out in the cold, in the snow, it was when he really should have one on. 

Instead, Kakashi was in a thin white button-up shirt with dark suspenders straining across his torso and a pair of too-loose black trousers, obviously not fit to him in the slightest. He was soaked through in the snowfall, his red-flushed skin clearly visible through his shirt. His silver hair was flat against his scalp, not a single spike pointing skyward. Alone in front of the fifty-foot tall stone obelisk, the man looked small and out-of-place, like a wandering field mouse walking up to the big house and staring up at the building in silent awe. 

He was staring up at the very top of the monument, his head lifted high and held back. His hands were at his sides, still and unmoving, with nothing in them.

As Iruka neared him, slowing down as panic and confusion wove their way over his heart, he noticed with intense surprise that Kakashi was not wearing shoes. His feet were bare, directly on the dark stone pathway in front of the obelisk.

Even though he was being quiet on instinct, Iruka knew there was no way that Kakashi wasn’t aware that he was being hunted, that his hunter was now dangerously nearby. He was readying himself to pounce on the man when instead –

Kakashi turned around in a flash of silver – and then was on top of him, pressing Iruka hard into the snow-strewn stones, roughly shifting him on his spine, forcing Iruka to look up at him.

Iruka didn’t turn back into a human he was so caught off-guard. In contrast, his instincts screamed at him to snarl, and so he did, baring his teeth, narrowing his yellow lupine eyes in violent warning for Kakashi not to do anything more than this.

But the other man was absolutely unconcerned by the threat display. Disregarding the fearsome teeth so close to his pink-flushed face, Kakashi soundlessly grappled with Iruka until Iruka stopped resisting, finally surrendering to the vulnerable position after receiving a few well-placed tight holds on his front wolf legs. 

Yet Iruka kept up the silent snarl, determined not to give in all the way. His instinctive fear of Kakashi – of vampires – of death – was demanding that he fight everything that the man was doing to him out here in the snow-drenched countryside. But his wolf body was beginning to fall apart: he could feel his muscles quiver in weak submission to Kakashi’s supernatural strength, his heart panicking but also slowing down as it yielded to the undoubtedly superior creature holding him down. 

Before he could think what to do next, Kakashi finally spoke to him, his voice strained and shaking with each and every word:

“Stop looking for me. I will kill you. I will accidentally kill you.”  


It was then Iruka had the sudden notion to actually _look_ at the man above him, not just see him through the filter of instinctive fear and the fevered high of running miles and miles. 

What he saw made him instantly turn back into a man, uncaring that he was nude in the snow.

Kakashi was flushed red, he was breathing hard, he was shivering in pained restraint. His unusual eye was closed so tightly, his whole face looked tormented, something that had never happened to his appearance before. He was gritting his teeth behind tight lips; his nostrils flared with each terrible labored breath. He was staring down at Iruka with enough force that it was difficult not to believe that he was seeing straight through into Iruka’s brain, seeing the little werewolf machinery at work, assessing and testing out what to do in this bewildering situation. 

But Iruka was human once again, and he grabbed at the snow-wet fabric of Kakashi’s shirt, and he was confessing hurriedly, hoarsely, “I won’t leave you alone. I can’t leave you alone.”

Above him, Kakashi flinched full across his face. He shook his head back and forth, so much motion for a man constantly sitting still in Iruka’s living room. He answered Iruka quickly in a dark, urgent tone, “You don’t understand. I can’t control myself around you.”

Then – then Kakashi tried to vanish again.

But, this time, this third time, Iruka was adamant that he would not be left behind. 

He wouldn’t let Kakashi leave again.

And he was a wolf again in less than a second, and his teeth sunk down into Kakashi’s calf, down into the skin and muscle, down until he hit bone, and he shook hard, dragging the vampire right out the air and slamming him into the gathered white snow right by the obelisk. He went on top of Kakashi this time, his huge paws shoving him down like the first night they met, ripping through the thin fabric and clawing into the pale skin of his chest. 

Iruka went back to his human shape, he was reaching down and snatching Kakashi by the collar, he was furiously reprimanding the man only an inch from Kakashi’s confused, reddened face: 

“How _dare_ you leave me alone. How _dare_ you think I would let you live alone. _You are coming home with me._ Shut up, just shut up – you’re coming home _now._ ”

Although Iruka really had no idea what he expected Kakashi to do after his infuriated announcement, he certainly hadn’t imagined that the vampire would just stare up at him in complete undisguised disbelief and wonder.

He relaxed his hands on Kakashi’s shirt, feeling the first wave of embarrassment for accosting the other man so violently in preventing him from disappearing. Leaning backwards, Iruka realized all too slowly that he was straddling Kakashi while entirely nude in increasingly heavy snowfall in the early hours of the morning. He glanced down, a bit mystified, to his own naked scarred body – seeing his dark skin collecting white snow – which was melting after only a moment.

 _But why?_ Iruka knew he ran hot as a werewolf, but not so warm to… to melt snow.

His eyes floated back towards Kakashi’s unchanged incredulous expression.

_God, he’s flushed red._

And then Iruka realized something in his exhausted, conflicted brain: Kakashi was burning up.

“Why are you so hot?” he asked impulsively, meeting the man’s single open eye.

Immediately, Kakashi replied, voice quiet but without any inflection whatsoever, “I killed four men and drank their blood.”

Iruka felt faint. Faint and stupid. It all slotted into place, like he had found the last missing piece of a million-part puzzle and shoved it all together and the exhausted euphoria of success was flowing over him and through him. He was silent as he stared down at Kakashi, considering what had caused his first sudden departure, how he had returned and then disappeared again.

Kakashi was a vampire. He was hungry. He hadn’t stopped to feed because he was so distracted by Iruka and their time together. And so he accidentally – he accidentally went to feed on Iruka and stopped himself – and he ran away – and he… he had killed people and gotten drunk on blood – and he had come back to Iruka, completely and disastrously unsober, acting on brutish instinct, only realizing something was off when Iruka finally said something, leaving once again and coming _here_ of all places.

To where Iruka’s parents had their names listed in stone, far up at the top of the obelisk.

Wide-eyed and watching Kakashi gazing single-eyed up at him, embarrassingly distracted by Iruka’s mouthy determination, Iruka faced yet another insane realization:

_Oh… Oh fuck. He’s still drunk, isn’t he? He’s – he’s –_

Kakashi’s dark eye was half-lidded as usual, but it was hotly fixed on Iruka’s face, no matter how he moved, closer or further away, left or right. The vampire’s hands had relocated to Iruka’s bare hips, holding him in place, evidently without thinking. He looked dazed in the aftermath of Iruka’s scolding, like he’d been knocked in the head far too hard and was now reeling from a bad concussion. His silver eyebrows had dropped down close to eyes; he was squinting up at Iruka, as if he was forcibly trying to understand just what was happening between them.

When Iruka gently put his hands on Kakashi’s forearms, on the snow-damp fabric of his sleeves, the vampire underneath him turned his attention to the new contact, looking deeply critically at Iruka’s fingers spread over his barely-clad skin.

“Kakashi,” Iruka tried, keeping his tone under control, forcing away his aggravation. “You shouldn’t be out here by yourself. You really can come home with me. It’ll be okay.”

After a strange moment that seemed to stretch on forever, Kakashi asked in a distant voice, still looking down at Iruka’s calloused hands resting on his arms, “What sort of dream is this?”

It took Iruka a few seconds to gather himself: his instincts warred between blushing and slapping Kakashi across the face. He had never imagined the other man _dreaming_ about him, he still wasn’t even sure the vampire slept! And he had thought Kakashi coming to see him, apparently drunk off a blood binge, had been a dream, which made him all the more mortified. _His_ dreams were of them fucking like dogs in heat – and Kakashi’s dream was Iruka atop him in the snow, totally nude, admonishing him and demanding he return home?

“It’s not a dream,” Iruka muttered, slowly stroking up Kakashi’s arm, trying to bring him back to reality. He observed Kakashi’s single eye following the movement with unnerving accuracy. “I want you to come back to the city with me. Can – can you do that?” He swallowed, daring to draw his hand up to Kakashi’s face, brushing back the wet hair from the man’s scarred cheek and closed magical eye. “Can you do that for me?”

“I would do anything for you,” Kakashi said instantaneously with such unsettlingly innocent honesty that Iruka’s body reacted in one way and one way only – by blushing hard, pink going across his own scarred cheeks and dancing down his throat and up to his ears.

“Oh,” Iruka found himself saying, so very softly that he wondered if Kakashi even heard him. His hand was frozen on the other man’s cheek, his fingertips shivering in the cold air against Kakashi’s searing-hot skin. 

He should have felt horribly uncomfortable nude in front of the memorial stone to his parents and the thousand other dead men and women from the Demon Fox incident twelve years earlier – but Iruka instead found himself leaning down and giving Kakashi a truly gentle kiss on the lips, his hand going deep into the man’s wet silver hair.

It was so very different from all the other times that they had kissed. Unlike before, especially over the ten days where Kakashi had become ever colder, the vampire was truly warm, lips and all. He was radiating a nearly painful heat, apparently from all the new blood pouring through him. Even while disoriented, Kakashi was quite interested in Iruka’s mouth; he was a bit more forceful returning the kiss, he was giving a low moan, his hands went immediately roaming up and down Iruka’s naked sides like they had in the-dream-that-wasn’t-a-dream. 

When Iruka found the strength to pull away from the kiss, he dropped down to Kakashi’s ear, saying in a desperate whisper, “Come home with me, Kakashi.”

And – then – rending Iruka’s world in two – Kakashi said right back to him, his voice wobbly and weak, but still sounding breathlessly sincere, “I’ve never slept with anyone before.”

Slowly drawing backwards, Iruka tried not to lose all of his mind at once. He could feel confusion oozing out of his pores, his understanding of everything – literally everything – breaking into tiny ragged little pieces. He stared down at Kakashi’s carelessly blank expression with both eyes opened wide, wide, wide. His heart was sliding down his ribcage, ringing each bone like taut strings on a cello, the ominous sound echoing loudly in his ears.

“What did you say?” he managed to ask, his throat closing up, his mouth going dry.

Kakashi literally changed not a thing as he repeated himself exactly, “I’ve never slept with anyone before,” and continued to look up at Iruka, clearly still stuck in his blood-drunk dream.

“Please tell me I wasn’t your first kiss.”

A bit of irritation crossed over Kakashi’s pretty reddened face. He retorted freely, sounding surprisingly insulted by the idea: “Of course not. I’ve been undead for three hundred and four years; I was alive twenty-seven years before that.”

Yet, somehow, Iruka could hear the underneath to the underneath, and he worked out the truth of things, eventually inquiring in a slow, careful way while watching Kakashi’s expression: “But everything else…?”

“You’re my first.”

Although Kakashi’s body heat was already making Iruka feel unpleasantly warm, a new horrific flush overcame him the very instant that the other man made his laid-back confession. He felt suddenly like _he_ was the drunk one, and he had to reach down to hold onto Kakashi’s shoulders, he was so afraid that he might pass out from the sheer confusing turmoil of new unexpected information now swirling dangerously about his head. 

All while he was naked.

In the snow.

In front of the obelisk where his dead parents’ names were etched into stone.

“Get us home,” Iruka half-choked out, feeling unbelievably pained and sick all of a sudden.

Wordlessly, Kakashi brought his arms around Iruka, then he was sitting up, then standing up. He swept Iruka right into a bridal embrace once again, and he glanced around silently, looking like a silver-feathered falcon carefully seeking out prey. He finally spotted the city in the far distance, through all the snowfall, through the clouds, and he tightened his hold on Iruka, pressing Iruka’s nude scarred body even closer to his own desperately heat-emanating form. 

Then Kakashi moved with the speed that had been so impossibly, freakishly fast that earlier Iruka hadn’t been able to catch his movement – and it was so lightning-like, so rapid, so outrageous, that Iruka instantly utterly blacked out.


	9. Chapter 9

Iruka woke up to the smell of fried eggs and fresh bacon.

His stomach grumbled in response; he started to climb out of bed, seeking the kitchen on desperate instinct. Even though he wasn’t particularly sure why, he found he was absolutely starving. It felt like he could eat all of the animals in the city zoo, including the African elephants and the polar bears, too.

But then he realized in a single, sharp, horrifying moment:

_Naruto can barely boil an egg, there’s no way he can cook bacon!_

As Iruka flung himself out of bed, his legs rapidly revealed his idiocy. He fell face-first on the floor, nearly flattening his nose on the wood, his body screaming in protest at the sudden movement. Oh, dear God, he was in pain, he was in so much pain. His muscles were furiously reprimanding him, his throat seemed as if he had been swallowing broken glass throughout the night, his feet felt like he’d run on hot asphalt for the last century.

But – shit – Naruto –

He dragged himself to standing, clinging to his dresser, determined beyond belief to get to his son and save him from destroying the kitchen – he might burn himself! – he might burn the building down! 

As Iruka stumbled down the hallway, trying not to knock the framed photographs off the wall, his werewolf senses were singing: there wasn’t just fried eggs and fresh bacon, there was toast, and baked beans, and ham, and – and – English black tea? 

His heart was doing unskilled parkour in his chest, bouncing about his other internal organs, urging him to lay down and die – but no – no – Naruto! His poor son!

Rounding the corner into the living room and the kitchen, Iruka stopped dead in his tracks: he was just so very wickedly unready for the inexplicable sight before him.

Naruto was curled up on the couch, pillow pressed to his face, his bright blue eyes fixed on an old anime movie on the television screen. He was wearing pajamas, his most comfortable pair, the ones that Iruka had bought him on the day they had declared to be his birthday (the boy didn’t know his birthday, which made both of them immeasurably sad, but Iruka had fixed it by saying Naruto could have his birthday when the cherry blossoms first fell in the city). 

In front of Naruto on the coffee table… was an entire breakfast spread, a foreign one, a collection of strange food that Iruka had never seen gathered together. The growing boy had eaten about half of it, but there was still so much left, suggesting a truly ridiculous amount of prepared food.

And then Iruka noticed Kakashi Hatake sitting in the broken recliner, the British newspaper _The Times_ completely covering his face, his long jean-clad legs stretched ahead of him.

Just as Iruka was beginning to croak out a sound of confusion and question, Naruto spotted him, and, with massive glee and thrill, shouted at the very top of his lungs:

“Iruka-sensei! You’re awake!” 

The young youkai leapt over to him, instantly bringing out both hands and forcing healing energy into Iruka’s weakened body. The boy was rambling immediately as he did so; Iruka found himself staring, flabbergasted at what was going on, totally unable to look away.

Fortunately, Naruto was committed to explaining what happened – or at least what he thought happened.

“Kakashi-sensei brought you back this morning! I stayed up all night, I couldn’t figure out where you went, you didn’t leave a note, but I thought maybe you were out finding Kakashi-sensei, so I tried to be patient. I watched the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy, and I was on the first Hobbit movie when Kakashi-sensei came back with you. You were unconscious, just like that other night, and I would have healed you, but Kakashi-sensei had gotten bit real bad by a werewolf, so I had to spend most of my energy on him, I’m sorry, Iruka-sensei, I would have loved to help you, too, but, man, he looked _terrible_.”

As Naruto took a breath, preparing himself to unload out more information about his morning, Iruka looked up at Kakashi, anxious to see his reaction to the story.

Having lowered his newspaper down to his nose, Kakashi’s single dark eye met Iruka’s gaze in a keen bewildering moment. His other eye, the enchanting one, was perfectly closed, like it nearly always was. But extreme change had rewritten Kakashi’s eternally pale-white features, which could now be clearly seen in the daytime and the overhead lighting of the living room: he was still fully red-flushed in the face. His black eye was somehow both attentive and wandering. 

Before Iruka could even think to speak to either of them, Naruto went back to spilling out his life story in the air between them, still pouring healing energy into Iruka’s weary frame: 

“Kakashi-sensei explained it all to me, so you don’t have to worry. I didn’t know that there was a bad guy who was bothering you, I wish you would have told me. I mean, I’m glad Kakashi-sensei tracked him down, and I’m even happier than you were there to stop the bad guy from taking Kakashi-sensei away, but, wow, he really did a number on Kakashi-sensei’s leg, you should have seen it, there was blood everywhere, I could totally see his leg bone. It was gross, but also awesome, too, but it’s all fixed now! Show him, Kakashi-sensei!”

With both Naruto and Iruka’s attention pointedly redirected to him, Kakashi apparently felt compelled to put aside his newspaper on the noticeably short stack of papers on the floor. Normally, the pile was nearly knee-high, but today, there were only two other papers, both looking like Sunday editions… the ones that he would have missed while out on his blood binge.

While visibly looking quite normal but for that unceasing heavy blush, Kakashi’s movements were just a little off – something Iruka could detect with his werewolf sight and memory of the man. The vampire had clearly convinced Naruto that he was fine beyond the leg wound that Iruka had given him, the one that he was blaming on some unknown other werewolf. 

Kakashi pushed up his jeans, showing the area of pale white skin where Iruka had sunk his teeth. There was nothing there, not even the shadow of a fang-shaped scar. Although Iruka could still very much feel the meaty thickness of Kakashi’s calf in his mouth and could practically hear the crush of his teeth on the man’s fibula in his ears, there was no surviving sign of their intense encounter in the snow by the Demon Fox memorial obelisk. 

As usual, Naruto could rewrite history: he was doing it again with Iruka this very moment, making it so that the long horrible run was a distant memory and nothing more.

“See, Iruka-sensei!” Naruto exclaimed cheerily, embracing him with force. “It’s okay now!”

Above Naruto’s head, Iruka and Kakashi exchanged meaningful but rather indecipherable looks. Obviously Kakashi had lied his ass off to explain both of their absences, the awful wound that Iruka had given him, and the state of Iruka’s body after the hunt and the magical rush home. However, the other man didn’t look contrite at all: instead, he was remarkably blank-faced, almost absurdly so, looking like he had weeks ago, as if he was a Renaissance painting with rosy cheeks and an empty expression. 

“Who made the food…?” Iruka asked Naruto quietly. He pulled his gaze away from Kakashi to study the kitchen – and was floored to see that the kitchen was a total fucking wreck – but only because someone had made an entire medieval feast in their tiny culinary space. The counter was stacked high with ham, slices of bacon, more toast, cold fried eggs, a white ceramic bowl of already-cooked baked beans, and was that an antique teapot? Was that a foreign box of English breakfast tea?

“Kakashi-sensei made everything!” Naruto chirped with clueless satisfaction. He bounced over to the kitchen, pointing out each of the different foods and naming them like Iruka had never seen them ever before in his life… which Iruka realized slowly might have been true for Naruto, even if it wasn’t for him. The boy added triumphantly, “He made it for both of us. We have so much that we can eat the rest tonight after Parent-Teacher Conference Day!”

The words crept up on Iruka then hit him like a pile of bricks.

“What?” he sputtered, suddenly flustered beyond belief. “That’s today? Why aren’t you in school? Shouldn’t you be in school right now?” 

Iruka started forward in surprise, but his legs were still unsteady, and he fell.

But then suddenly Kakashi was holding him with strong arms; he was so fast that Iruka hadn’t even seen his movement, but he was burning hot pressed up against Iruka, smelling so frighteningly intense, so like himself, _no, better_ that Iruka felt his whole body flush, harden, glory in it, and Iruka seized Kakashi’s shoulders, instantly and impulsively wanting with shuddering violence to force the man down onto the floor, down onto his hands and knees, rip off his pretty clothes, _and take him right then and there, make him mine, mark him as mine, he’s mine, you’re mine, you’re going to be mine forever - - -_

Without saying a thing, Kakashi righted Iruka on his feet - and then the vampire was standing alone across the room by the front door.

He was making an unusual expression… one that Iruka couldn’t immediately place.

As Kakashi glanced over at Naruto, who was piling up a second plate and had stunningly not noticed anything from the past few seconds, Iruka finally understood something:

_Kakashi’s still drunk, he’s still totally drunk._

Falling back on instinct, Iruka turned tail and went to his bedroom, methodically changing into one of his better suits from back when he had been a university lecturer. He tried not to consider his confusingly intense bodily response, undoubtedly enhanced by Naruto’s youkai spiritual energy, to being proximate with the blood-intoxicated vampire, but he kept harking back to his thoughtless instinct to… to do what? 

_What was that? Did I want him to become… my mate? Is that even possible? A werewolf and a vampire..? Could we…?_

Still very much in a daze, Iruka went to the bathroom, completing his delayed and condensed morning routine, which included shaving his face, fixing his hair, brushing his teeth, putting on deodorant. Although he wanted to shower, there was no way they were going to make it to school in time, so he gave up his need to cleanse himself of whatever was left on him after Naruto and Kakashi hand-washed him. He felt renewed energy with Naruto’s spirit swirling through his veins, a familiar feeling from all the small and enormous injuries he had sustained in the last year since he’d taken Naruto in his home and heart.

But… but the impulse to mate with anyone… especially with Kakashi Hatake, a vampire, the mortal enemy of werewolves, while he was blood-drunk and still out of his mind…

That hadn’t happened before, not even during a full moon.

Was it something about Kakashi when he was intoxicated that was driving him particularly wild?

Or was it… something else?

Really, Iruka had no more spare time to think about it, because, all of a sudden, the three of them were walking down the street to Naruto’s middle school. He fussed over Naruto’s clothing, trying to address the insane state of his sleep-disheveled blonde hair. Iruka even licked his thumb and tried to get the remnants of raspberry jam off Naruto’s line-marked cheek. Although the boy fought him every step, he could tell that his sweet little son was excited about Parent-Teacher Day, and Iruka had to force his fearfully over-eager body under control, he was so determined to make a good impression on Naruto’s almost-certainly exhausted teachers. 

They arrived late, of course, just past noon. The whole event was a whirlwind, moving swiftly from class to class, with Naruto’s energy levels so impossibly high that Iruka had to remind him to keep his flowy blue spirit within his skin on more than one occasion. 

Throughout the entire experience, Kakashi was perfectly composed and absolutely silent. He stayed by Iruka’s side, or right behind him, throughout Parent-Teacher Day, through the full three hours. Since no one had enough courage to ask who he was, Kakashi became a soundless familial sentinel, looking sophisticated but also like he was suffering from a bad fever. The man wore relatively loose jeans when he usually preferred tighter pairs; he’d put on a maroon button-up shirt and yet another wondrous black wool coat. Even with his reddened cheeks and constant wink-wince, Kakashi looked much like he always did… like a lean eccentric model who just walked off a Parisian runway.

More than one teacher – male and female – became flustered around him. 

The same thing happened to some of the other parents and a few of the students, too.

Violently suppressing his jealousy, Iruka enjoyed discussing Naruto’s progress along with the innumerable more negative issues that his son was having both in the classroom and with his peers. He took meticulous notes on everything, firmly scolding himself in his recent relaxation of Naruto’s tutoring. Even while his body was still riding the high of youkai spiritual energy, Iruka found that his werewolf brain was slowing down and growing tired after running through so many different interactions. He was honestly relieved when Naruto asked in a quiet pleading voice if he could go see his friend, Sasuke, and hang out with him on the school playground.

Outside in the snow, watching the boys on the swings, Iruka stood beside Kakashi for a good long while before he realized that they were finally alone for the first time since Iruka had hunted him down.

He wanted to know what it meant to have a blood-drunk vampire at his side. He wanted to ask Kakashi if he had felt something earlier when the other man had stopped him from falling, or had it just been him? He wanted to figure out when and where Kakashi had learned to cook, where did he go shopping for such hardy food, did he have a secret cache of beautiful coats, did Kakashi know that he smelled so so so good this very moment that it was hard to concentrate on anything except for him? 

Yet – just as Iruka was about to bring up anything, everything, something – Kakashi interrupted him in a sharp, interested tone:

“That’s Naruto’s friend?”

Feeling more than a bit thrown, Iruka followed Kakashi’s single-eyed gaze to the dark-haired boy sitting on the swings with Naruto. The two boys were differently bodied, Naruto being stockier and more muscular, but appearances were deceiving. Sasuke looked like if an old samurai sword had magically transformed into a prepubescent boy. He wasn’t looking over at Naruto, but he was responding every once and a while, which truthfully was more than Iruka would have expected for such a moody little boy. It wasn’t the first time that Iruka had seen Sasuke, but it was still new and rewarding to witness Naruto with a close friend, and he found himself smiling a bit wistfully at the sight.

“Yes, that’s Sasuke Uchiha.” 

Standing on Kakashi’s right side, his good side, Iruka watched the vampire slant him a contemplative look and his silver eyebrows rise up high on his flushed forehead.

“You know that he’s a demon, right?”

“… what?” was all Iruka could manage in response. 

He felt empty suddenly, as if the youkai energy disappeared from him all at once.

Still seeming rather disoriented, Kakashi only nodded, saying nothing else.

“How do you know that?” Iruka eventually had to demand, hearing protective fatherly fear in his voice and not caring in the slightest. He was fixated on Kakashi’s face – but he was also desperately trying to keep Naruto in his sight line – and, God damn it, Kakashi, answer the question quicker –

So very strangely, Kakashi’s expression shifted like he was thinking about something tragic, something old and sorrowful, but then, just as quick, it was gone, and he lifted a long gloved finger to touch the featherlight scar through his other cheek. He admitted, sounding absolutely neutral, looking not at Iruka but rather at the boys across the playground: “The Uchiha are a demon clan. I have one of their eyes.”

Iruka’s heart took up its inexpert attempt at acrobatics again: he couldn’t keep up with everything all of a sudden. But before Iruka could reach out to comfort the other man, Kakashi dropped his hand, putting it back inside his coat pocket. He looked like a wounded soldier steeling his face in front of his compatriots, trying to seem braver than he was, even as he bled out and suffered and thought desperately of home.

Iruka finally started to speak, still dreadfully surprised by the realization Kakashi’s enchanting eye _wasn’t his at all, it was a demon’s_ -

A shadow-eyed man suddenly appeared in front of them, his black hair swept up in a peculiar loose pony tail with long bangs hanging about his face, his faux-salaryman clothes entirely monochrome with a fine grey suit jacket, high-end black jeans, white button-up shirt, and a crisply pressed black tie. He was shorter than them both, leaner than Iruka but not as emaciated as Kakashi, and he radiated cool darkness like it was expensive cologne.

With his arms crossed in front of his chest, and his dead-inside gaze locked only onto Kakashi’s blood-blushed face, the stranger displayed immense disinterest in Iruka and vast displeasure with Kakashi.

“I didn’t know you wanted to die, Copy Nin.”

Even though every single one of his werewolf instincts were warning him to stare at the man while backing quickly away from him, Iruka’s deep bond with Kakashi drove him to look instead at the dazed vampire. He was absolutely startled to see Kakashi’s entire countenance had radically changed, gone dark and sinister. Kakashi was still as blank-faced as ever but somehow now it seemed more like he was wearing a red-painted porcelain mask of lethal intent. 

Although he trusted his lover, Iruka’s instincts were tripping over themselves to counsel him _to get the fuck away from these two, they are superior to you in every way, they can and will kill you with a flick of the wrist, the blink of an eye_.

Staring only at the man, Kakashi said flatly, “I thought you abandoned your brother.”

The frightening stranger didn’t respond in any discernable way. 

After a stray second, though, he turned and looked directly at Iruka –

\- and both his black eyes went supernova, exploding into scarlet blood with constellations of dark sparkling spots spiraling through the liquid red landscape.

Suddenly Iruka found himself draped in Kakashi’s left arm, like a delicate woman who had fainted in the summer heat; he was coming to, shaking his head, trying to understand his crazily scattered thoughts. He could see little snatches of his own old memories floating through the front of his mind, and they made him sick, so very sick, that his stomach started to churn, bile crawling up his throat. 

His mother, her long brown hair that looked so much like his, petting his fever-slick brow, spoon-feeding him miso soup; 

the hunter who held him down as a puppy, trying to cut open his throat, missing and striking his snout when his father’s huge jaws closed around the woman’s head, crushing her skull, spraying Iruka with blood;

his terrified neighbor, a human woman, holding him back, as his parents ran into the rubble, the roaring red flame of the Demon Fox all around him;

his laughing classmates, finding his pained antics hilarious, while he shook miserably on the inside, knowing he had to go back to an empty apartment on the anniversary of his parents’ deaths; 

Mizuki wrenching out his slender silver wolf form, snatching a knife from the kitchen with human hands, slamming it deep into Iruka’s back in their shared studio; 

Naruto on the park swing, crying big fat familiar tears, holding onto Iruka’s fingers like he was the last thing in existence; 

Kakashi stepping out of the shower, wringing water out of his beautiful hair, looking up and meeting Iruka’s yellow lupine eyes for the first time.

… the same lovely vampire who was currently choking the life out of the strange man in front of them.

His leather-gloved fingers were wrapped around the too-white skin of the man’s neck, but underneath his hand was a rolling upset force of shadowy magic, desperate and frantic to fend off the assault, to stop impending death.

But Kakashi’s arm was tight and resolute on Iruka’s waist, and so too was his hand on the man’s throat, crushing downwards through the dark magic, driving into the skin, muscle, bone millimeter by millimeter, striving to destroy him by decapitation.

“Stop,” Iruka tried to say, but it was inaudible, and he forced himself to speak up, saying loudly in a panicked shout, “Kakashi, stop, please stop!”

Instantly in response, without looking at Iruka, Kakashi dropped the man, who stepped immediately backwards, glowering with his insane red-and-black eyes back at him –

Because he was a demon, Iruka realized. He was an Uchiha. 

He… was Sasuke’s mysterious brother. 

“If you ever hurt him, Itachi,” Kakashi ground out, his voice like a stormy night where the moon was gone and only crackling lightning filled the skies. “You will wish you were still in hell.”

The strange man, the demon, this Itachi Uchiha was nowhere near as enraged as Kakashi, but he was visibly taking the warning deep within himself. He was calculating; his whole expression was simultaneously as vacant as Kakashi’s, yet he seemed terribly meditative, like he was judging a thousand different options ahead of him all at the same time. 

“The rumors are true, then,” Itachi mused aloud, tone dry. His bright red-and-black eyes were still on Kakashi, their magic seemingly not affecting him; Iruka kept his head down, unsure where to look. With Kakashi holding him close with one arm, his own older violent impulse to take the blood-tipsy vampire was daring to rise to the surface once again. He was too hot, they were both too hot, his body felt sick and feverish and muddled.

“You’re with the de –”

“ _Itachi -_ No fair! I can’t believe you got to meet Kakashi’s werewolf before I did!”

Iruka’s gaze swung up out of his control: he was flabbergasted to witness a truly enormous man wearing a forest-green track suit walk from behind them and catch Itachi by the shoulders, putting him into an immediate expert-level headlock and ruffling his black hair with one huge hand. Even though Itachi was clearly trying to resist, he was unable to get out of the hold, and he consequentially looked so put-out that he suddenly didn’t seem the least bit terrifying.

In contrast, the massive muscular man with the black bowl-cut, bushy eyebrows, and the shiniest teeth that Iruka had ever seen in his life – he was disconcerting, he was unbelievably disconcerting.

“Eternal Rival, it is so good to see you!” the man declared, using his free hand to give Kakashi a generous thumb’s up, which he then changed into an open hand and stuck close to Iruka’s face. On dumb instinct of human etiquette, Iruka took the stranger’s outstretched hand and became subject to the most intense handshake of his life. The truly exceptional man continued to hold onto Itachi, keeping the demon’s head directed down, as he shook Iruka's hand; most peculiarly, he seemed actually rather fond of the man he was forcibly half-embracing.

Nevertheless, Iruka nearly blacked out again when this new man, impossibly delighted, ridiculously thrilled, obviously unafraid of the strange gathering of demon, vampire, and werewolf in one place, announced with boisterous joy:

“Iruka, it is an absolute pleasure to meet you - I just can’t wait for your wedding!”

Time slowed down, down, down…

It wasn’t over, not at all, because the man suddenly concluded with a weeping exclamation:

“After two hundred years, Kakashi’s finally getting married!”


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Changing back to Kakashi's perspective means we're in for one truly wild ride...
> 
>  
> 
> ____

Iruka’s blood set his world on fire.

He was licking his bottom lip, desperate for more, when he realized what was happening. Underneath him, Iruka looked so confused, so perplexed; his fingertips were pretty and wet and red, and Kakashi stared at them, wanting to lick them clean, wanting to bite them right off Iruka’s hand, wanting to devour Iruka’s whole arm, wanting to eat every last little piece of Iruka.

_No. No. No!_

The night cold was not cold enough to blast away his hunger. He flung off his shirt, he tore off his undershirt and jeans, he was sitting on top of a skyscraper staring down at the city below. A silver-tipped owl swung by, seeking out prey, and he watched it, knowing what he needed to do, he needed to do that, too.

He broke into a store, smashing glass with a single fist. He took the first pants his fingers touched, the first white shirt and a pair of suspenders, because the pants were too loose, far too loose, they were falling off his hips and he clipped the metal to the belt just as the police flew up to the store, red and blue and red and blue and a matching screaming machine and shrill shouts of stop, put your hands up, and then he was downtown, walking the cigarette-strewn street, his demon eye open, wide open, in search of someone.

He saw them with his human eye first: they were businessmen, foreigners, white Westerners, slinking along the city like they owned the place, looking down their noses on the locals. They were already drunk, smug, self-righteous, and they were inside the fancy hotel downtown three blocks from where Iruka worked, they were in the elevator riding up to the suite level. He observed it from across the street, both eyes open, his demon eye breaking down into the dark truth of the situation.

The girls were all underage, in high heels and tight skirts; the man trafficking them was holding one hard on the arm, saying something low and hurried and harsh. They were in front of the suite, they were inside, and then so was he, grabbing the two girls and shoving them in the bathroom, saying something like ‘Don’t open the door.’ 

The foreign men were shouting, the local was shooting at him. He saw the bullets as they came towards him, moved aside, heard them hit the walls, breaking plaster, splintering wood.

He snapped the trafficker’s neck. He was less swift with the others, relishing each passing second of terror pouring out of their pores, lingering on the last man and witnessing his face go ashen in advance of death. He drank him first, until the man’s cheeks were hollow and his skin clung to his bones. Then the others, he took them faster than the initial man, and he was brushing blood off his scarred cheek, running his tongue along his finger, when he heard the girls’ soft crying, and, at that moment, the blood hit his system, and –

He was gone.

Next thing he remembered, he was in the river, floating on his back, looking at the daytime sky.

His face hurt: he had been in direct sunlight far too long. He wasn’t sure how long he’d been outside. He flipped over on his stomach, surveying where he was in the river, where he was in the world. He frankly had no idea. He spotted a lone deer in the distance, thought about tackling her and breaking her front legs and watching her scream herself hoarse until she died from fear. He saw migrating birds overhead, wondered where they were going, were they going home, should he follow them home?

He didn’t have a home. He had never had a home.

His father hung himself in the garden.

His mother had died in an epidemic; her body was black when they buried her.

He was in the woods, contemplating a hibernating bear in a dark cave, curious if she could feel him instinctively in her deadened state. His clothes no longer had any blood of them, but he could feel the stuff running hot and wild through his thin brittle veins. He crouched down, thinking about what he would do this winter, if he would hibernate and wait it out, see what the world had to offer him in the springtime.

Would he be with Iruka in the springtime? 

He was back in the city suddenly; he was across the street from Iruka’s apartment. He stared at the broken recliner through the window, the sunken old couch, the tattered report card on the fridge stuck there with a yellow smiley-face magnet. He was inside the building, through the bedroom window, he was pressing on his favorite person in existence, he was so relieved to find Iruka still here after all this time.

The sounds were familiar, and unfamiliar, and he loved all of them. He wondered at the feel of Iruka’s ribs under his hands, they were delicate and strong, they held the wolf together like body armor and chain mail and long nights watching soap operas. He could feel the powerful beat of the wolf’s heart; it was a heavy percussion drum pounding in his ears. 

He wanted to know Iruka, every part of him, inside and outside. 

He remembered Iruka’s back scar, the one he had seen by the river; his mouth was on the old wound. He was licking deeply into it, wanting to taste the blood from when it happened years earlier, wanting to heal it with his undead tongue like he wasn’t evil magic but something more angelic, more like Rin, more like how she had been, so good and pristine, before he killed her. He couldn’t heal Iruka, or maybe he could, if he tried enough. He would never kill Iruka, he would never let anyone kill Iruka. He would kill anyone who hurt Iruka, he would kill himself if he ever hurt Iruka. 

Underneath him, his blurred dream was saying something in a fine whine, it sounded like someone begging for his life – but, no, he was begging for more – for intimacy – for – 

He shouldn’t be here. He was going to kill Iruka. He was going to eat him alive.

_He was so stupid – he couldn’t have a lover – he could never have a lover - he was going to rip Iruka to pieces and taste blood on his tongue and hang himself in the garden and be black and dead when he was buried._

It was snowing at the memorial stone. The Demon Fox, twelve years ago, roaming about engulfed in crimson fire, crashing through skyscrapers and crushing people under his blazing claws. He and Gai, standing on the edge of it all, staring in dark awe.

“He seems in pain.”

Gai’s cursed-chain-drenched face looked equally anguished when the man spoke the words, and it was written into his own demon-eye’s memory, looping over and over, as he stared high up at the stone in the snowfall years later.

Iruka’s parents were there, near the pinnacle, shining and high. He was down below, he was pure evil incarnate, he was undead, he was unreal. He couldn’t speak anything aloud to them, but he was trying to say it all, confess and plead and ask permission and make promises.

_I will protect him, unless I kill him, but if I kill him, I will torture myself with crosses and silver and sunlight, I will tie cold iron to my feet and throw myself into the ocean and fill up with plastic and stare at fish and decomposing whales until the planet is eaten up by the sun._

And also – also – he could feel the place where his soul had been, an empty space, a black void, he was shoving it full of desperation, stuffing it with hope-filled cotton balls, strapping its leaking darkness shut with gauze and bandages and – and -

_I want to marry your son. I want to kiss him under the shining sun, I want to see him smile with his eyes closed, and he’s wearing a black tuxedo, and there’s beautiful flowers all around us. I want to make him happy, I want to keep his body unscarred, I want to save his soul from sin. He is good, so good, and I am not, and I know I don’t deserve him, but I want to marry your son, and if you could please give me permission, I will protect him with the last of my life, the rest of my unlife. Please, please, please -_

Iruka was behind him; he was panting as a wolf, his paws were hard on the snow.

He was on top of Iruka, keeping the werewolf still, watching as he struggled and surrendered. He still wanted to tear out Iruka’s throat, but he wanted more now, he wanted to kiss Iruka until he broke him, he wanted to feel Iruka’s cheekbones under his fingertips, he wanted to be inside him, he wanted Iruka inside him, he –

He was going to kill Iruka. He couldn’t be anyone’s lover. He couldn’t be Iruka’s lover.

He said as much, he said aloud, “Stop looking for me. I will kill you. I will accidentally kill you.”

The wolf was big and gorgeous and stupid; Iruka was suicidal. He was suddenly human, he was too close, and he was beautiful and scarred and saying something sentimental and horrible.

Something about not leaving Kakashi alone, not now, not ever.

_You don’t understand. I can’t control myself around you._

He wasn’t sure if he said it aloud, he wasn’t sure and he didn’t care. He couldn’t handle Iruka Umino; the werewolf was ruining him, ruining him in ways he had never imagined. He felt the blood rushing through his veins and heart, but there was more, and it was confusing and painful, there was uncurling green spring growth and waking baby bears and birds heading home, and he had to leave, he was gone.

But he wasn’t gone.

There was a strange feeling in his leg, blood was draining out his leg. He wasn’t able to focus on it, because Iruka Umino was a wolf, and then a human, and then a man, and Iruka was upset, he was furious, he was seething, his beautiful facial scar a dark streak of reverse lightning in the snowfall.

Clearer than anything else – than anything from the last week –

“How _dare_ you leave me alone. How _dare_ you think I would let you live alone. _You are coming home with me._ Shut up, just shut up – you’re coming home _now._ ”

Kakashi felt the words settle into him, past his skin, down to that once-empty site of his soul. They were blowing up, getting bigger, each of the words, becoming physical and real, taking up space like expanding electroactive polymer and a rising soufflé and rainwater flooding the Okavango Delta. 

Home, home, home. 

Home?

He had a home?

Iruka was staring down at him. He was straddling Kakashi. He was nude and beautiful. His scars, his ribcage, his brown skin, his – 

“Why are you so hot?”

Kakashi answered, he knew he answered, he could hear himself answer - “I killed four men and drank their blood” – but his attention was on Iruka’s eyes, he was keeping his demon eye closed, he didn’t want to entrap Iruka, he had done that before, he didn’t want to do that again, never again, Iruka would tell him the truth all on his own, he should tell Iruka the truth –

Shouldn’t he?

Iruka’s ribs were stronger than he remembered. His skin was smoother, even the scars. Had Iruka changed since – how long had it been since Kakashi had last seen him? It felt like a long time, maybe a decade? Or a half-century? Could it have been yesterday? Was it a few hours?

Iruka’s hand was on his arm, it was on Kakashi’s sleeve. 

Apparently Kakashi was wearing clothing. This wasn’t his shirt. He seemed to have on suspenders, they were way too tight on his chest, they might have hurt him except his leg was broken, but Kakashi’s attention wasn’t there, either, it was on Iruka’s calloused fingers on the wet white fabric clinging to his arm.

_Iruka touches me like I’m alive. He kisses me like I’m alive._

Iruka was saying something again, he was – he was saying that Kakashi should come home.

How could that be? How could Kakashi have a home? 

He had never had a home.

“What sort of dream is this?”

That could be the only thing that was happening, this was a dream, he hadn’t had a proper dream in fifty years, not since 1969 when humans landed on the moon and they saw the dark side of the moon and there was sweet white magic there and it blinded humanity and –

“It’s not a dream.”

Kakashi stared at Iruka’s fingertips so intently with his single human eye that he was suddenly furious that he had ever lost the first one. That was worse than death, the loss of his other eye, because he couldn’t see Iruka’s touch with two eyes, he had to accept Iruka with half his sight, and he wanted to see all of him, inside and out, and –

“Can you do that for me?”

The question flew through him like a spear – like a shuriken – like an artillery shell –

“I would do anything for you,” he replied, because truth was his new best friend, so sorry Maito Gai, you are second now, or third maybe, after Iruka Umino, but you are a good man, too, maybe too good, definitely too good, how are we friends Maito Gai, why are you friends with me –

Oh.

Oh, Iruka was kissing him.

Not a dream, not a dream.

Kakashi was kissing back, trying to stay present enough to not use all his strength at once, do not break Iruka, do not break Iruka, but, oh, taste him, taste him and enjoy him, he missed this, he missed Iruka, he wanted to go home, they should go home.

At the same exact moment, Iruka said to him, whispered to him, “Come home with me.”

They had a home together. Kakashi had a home with Iruka.

They should always be together. They should be lovers forever.

The truth, Iruka should know the truth.

“I’ve never slept with anyone before.”

Iruka was looking down at him, his expression was strange. But, it was okay, because Kakashi loved the werewolf’s face, his ribcage, his scars, his skin, his soul, his –

Iruka asked in voice unlike his usual one, “What did you say?”

So Kakashi repeated himself, because maybe Iruka was tired, they were many miles outside of the city, he must have run here as a wolf, that would have been hard on him. 

“Please tell me I wasn’t your first kiss,” Iruka said in response.

Kakashi knew he was being teased; he made a face up at the man atop him. He made sure to say, firmly, correcting any narrative that he was inexperienced to the point of being an embarrassment, he wasn’t embarrassed about being a virgin, no, not at all - “Of course not. I’ve been undead for three hundred and four years; I was alive twenty-seven years before that.”

Yet Iruka was fearless, he was direct and fearless, he was always that way.

“But everything else?”

Kakashi felt no embarrassment, either, as he informed Iruka, “You’re my first.”

Iruka responded by grabbing onto Kakashi’s shoulders; he was flushed, and he looked dizzy. His words sounded just as heated and confused as he ordered, demanded, asked, pled, in a low pained voice, one that struck Kakashi like arrows and bullets and late-night spiritual epiphanies: “Get us home.”

Kakashi could do that. He definitely could do that. He adjusted Iruka’s snow-wet body in his arms, looked around for home, for their home, and he went there with the sort of magical speed and strength that came with undeath and blood hydrating his body once more.

He was bleeding badly, leaving a trail of other men’s blood behind him, but, in seemingly no time at all, he was in front of their apartment door, once again knocking with one hand. 

And, again, the little youkai, the world-ender, answered the door, but, this time, Naruto looked relieved not just to see Iruka - but also Kakashi. His glowing aquamarine eyes were sharply studying them both, and he was swiftly ushering Kakashi inside, saying something, but then Naruto stopped, and he was staring, absolutely staring, at -

“Holy shit, what happened to your leg??”

Kakashi glanced down and noticed for the first time that his fibula was sticking out his skin. His entire right pants-leg (he was realizing these weren’t his pants, where had he gotten these pants?) was torn open, showing the extent of his wound and waves of red blood still flowing down his leg and over his bare foot and his toes and across the floor.

“Oh,” he mumbled, surprised by the sight. “I got bit.”

“By a bad guy?” Naruto questioned in a high-pitched voice, as both of them watched the blood pooling in the old linoleum doorway.

“Yeah, sure, a bad guy,” Kakashi found himself echoing. He glanced upwards to consider Iruka held tight in his arms, and he suddenly noticed the werewolf was utterly unconscious, likely from the magical run across the countryside. He added off-handedly, “I went out, and Iruka came after me, and he took care of things.”

“I’m going to heal you.”

Kakashi was usually quick on his feet, but he found himself stuck in molasses or sticky tar, because Naruto was so very fast, and the youkai was shoving, _just shoving_ , his abnormal chakra into Kakashi, the kind that fueled the Nine-Tailed Fox, made him huge and wild and fast and strong and mad, and – and – and –

He put Iruka in bed, and grabbed new clothes, and robbed a man of his coat, and was standing in the butcher’s shop, pointing out fine imported ham and the best bacon money could buy, and then he was in the British section of a high-end all-organic hipster grocery store, piling his arms high with cans of baked beans and English tea and good thick bread, and he walking down the street with his demon eye open, rambling internally to himself –

_People with homes protect people in their home, they make breakfast for people in their home, people love breakfast, families have breakfast together, Naruto is the Demon Fox, he’s the Nine-Tailed Fox, he’s a growing boy, he needs breakfast, the best breakfast I ever had, that was 1915, that was before I went to war, that was in that tiny English village, she said ‘You’re the most interesting person in this village,’ and I said, ‘That’s not true at all - you are,’ and she put her hand on my hand, and she made me a breakfast that I used to dream about, Naruto needs a breakfast like that, he needs to dream about breakfast._

And Kakashi realized he was making breakfast and had been for some unknown amount of time, the baked beans were already done, the ham sliced, the toast prepared, and then he slowly looked down and saw that Naruto was standing next to him in the apartment kitchen –

“How long have you been there?” Kakashi asked in thick confusion.

“The last hour and a half?”

“Why does it feel like I’m speeding?”

Naruto’s childish laughter covered up the crazy of his subsequent words. “Oh! That’s my spiritual energy! It makes other people act like they’ve had a bunch of energy drinks and candy. Like, a lot of candy.” He was smiling up at Kakashi, eyes closed, totally amused at his expense.

Instead of feeling disturbed, though, Kakashi scanned the apartment. 

“Where’s your daddy?”

“Huh? You mean Iruka-sensei?”

Kakashi shook his head, turning around fully, surveying the living room in dreamy distraction. He belatedly realized he was wearing Iruka’s white-and-red-plaid apron. He was verbally correcting Naruto as he glanced over at the front entrance of the apartment, recognizing with dawning surprise that the Fox had cleaned up the blood.

“Yeah, your daddy. Is he okay? Has he woken up?”

“No, he’s still resting.”

Kakashi looked back down at the Nine-Tailed Fox and found him looking so sad, it was such a strange and unbearable sight, and there was manic Fox energy tearing through Kakashi’s nerves and bad men’s blood coursing through his veins, and he suggested, clear and strong, staring down at Naruto with Obito’s eye firmly closed, “I’m going to teach you how to cook bacon.”

Naruto’s own supernatural blue eyes glowed bright. His smile went wide, turned into a grin. “Yeah? Really?” he asked, excitement causing him to tremble and jump in place.

“Yeah, really,” Kakashi repeated back to him, and he did just that, over and over again, showing the Nine-Tailed Fox – no, no – showing _Naruto_ how to cook bacon a few different ways, spending a full hour on that single task alone. He gave Naruto the tongs to turn the bacon, and, even when the kid messed it up, which he did over and over again, Kakashi shrugged it off and showed him again, describing how it was good to have two people working together in the kitchen, because _teamwork is important, it’s really important, Naruto, always remember that_ \- which was a funny thing to say, because Kakashi worked alone most of the time, but truthfully his favorite times in life and unlife had been with other people, now that he was thinking about it.

Kakashi was explaining why modern English people preferred teabags instead of loose-leaf tea when two things occurred at once:

First, he realized that he had apparently stopped at an antique store earlier while he was speeding on Fox chakra and had bought a freakishly expensive teapot from the mid-twentieth century to make tea, which meant he had gone to the bank, too, which made sense because how else had he bought all this food? 

Second, Naruto tugged on his sleeve and announced in a warm, pleased voice, “I want to call you Kakashi-sensei, can I do that?”

“Why would you do that?” Kakashi replied, his own tone flat and uncertain. He wasn’t a teacher, well, he wasn’t a good teacher, anyway: he had a few kouhai in the last three hundred years, but he wasn’t great with them, and they called him senpai, not sensei. 

“Because you’re teaching me to cook, and you’re a nice guy, and Iruka-sensei likes you.”

Kakashi was outside again.

At first he thought he’d run away from Naruto, terrified by the Nine-Tailed Fox’s honesty and sincerity, but then he noticed that he was holding newspapers in one hand and a DVD in the other, and it was his favorite anime movie from the 1980s, and he had the horrific realization _he was trying to share a soft, sweet, stupid part of himself with the Fox._

He opened Obito’s eye as wide as he could and looked down at his ungloved hands.

Yes, it was happening, it had happened, it was still happening:

_The Nine-Tailed Fox’s spiritual energy was mixed so intimately with his own spectral energy, it was like stirring together red and blue and seeing purple instead._

But, a moment later, Kakashi was home, and Naruto was in his pajamas, eating breakfast food and watching the movie, and Kakashi was reading the newspaper, or trying to do so, even though he was failing badly, rereading the same lines over and over again, his brain running at high speeds from Nine-Tailed Fox spirit energy and his body flushed and crazed with blood.

And – suddenly – Iruka Umino was standing in the living room, staring right at him, while Naruto healed his weary werewolf bones.

So they were both safe and home. 

He was home.

He was also blood-drunk, and chakra-high, and deeply in love.

… hopefully they would just stay home all day…


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for your patience. Life got in the way. 
> 
> But we're here now, and I hope, as always, you enjoy.
> 
>  
> 
> ____

Sasuke Uchiha was soaked in red glistening chakra. His demon body was curved up into a dark cat-like crescent, white teeth bared, black fur sticking up everywhere. His eyes were blood moons in the empty black sky of his infuriated feline form. 

He was losing in Mortal Kombat to Naruto Uzumaki. 

The Nine-Tailed Fox’s enormous spiritual body filled the arcade, its bright red tail spanning the entire restaurant over to their table to curl around Iruka. The Fox had one huge paw gripping the machine, and its claws went down through the floor, sinking out of Kakashi’s demon sight.

Matching his vessel Naruto, the Fox was grinning ear to ear, looking ludicrously thrilled.

Sasuke wrenched the joystick as he slammed down on a button: his character upper-cut Naruto’s avatar so hard that the little figure went flying off-screen. In perfect parallel, the boy’s demon form spiked all over, shadow magic turning into dark daggers of pure triumph. The Nine-Tailed Fox pushed down mightily on the machine, eagerly shaking in anticipation, the same moment that Naruto tried to make a last-second come back, his character returning to the floor and powering up for a final desperate attack. 

Unlike Naruto, who bore no signs of transmitted demon magic, Sasuke was glistening with little red droplets from the Fox chakra, like a British meadow shining wet with morning dew.

Iruka’s hand was warm resting on Kakashi’s thigh under the table. He turned to look at the site of contact, then slowly realized that he had Obito’s eye open, so he closed it properly to consider what precisely was happening around him, to him, such as – where exactly was he…?

Oh. Itachi and Gai were sitting across from him, from him and Iruka. 

And Gai was destroying an entire Hawaiian-style pizza by himself, downing the pineapple and ham with visible delight. He stopped occasionally to drink more beer – he had apparently been drinking a while – and so had Itachi and Iruka? There was an awful lot of beer in front of them. A dozen beer bottles? Had Itachi ordered a salad? Did… Itachi not like olives? Is that why there was an empty salad bowl with olives collected on the side?

Itachi’s eyes were back to normal - at least for the moment. They had been alert and engaged earlier when he’d targeted Iruka; Kakashi reflexively made his hand into a fist on top of the table. He would have killed Itachi Uchiha then, in front of the man’s own brother, in front of Naruto and Iruka, without worrying about it in the slightest, because – because _Itachi should know that if he hurt Iruka - he would die._

Kakashi turned his head to see Iruka: the werewolf, the man, was watching the interplay between Itachi and Gai with a strangely fond smile. His scarred face was so beautiful that it hurt to look at him, but Kakashi endured it, because he was in love, and he was surprised that Iruka hadn’t turned tail and run away from this madness - but that was Iruka’s strength, wasn’t it?

Iruka Umino never ran away. Iruka took risks… Like trusting him. Like inviting him into his home, and like letting Kakashi call it his home, too.

“You should have seen him in 1848, Iruka! He was drunk the whole year. It was truly the Springtime of the People! I had arranged for us to meet with Eugene – you know him, right? Eugene Delacroix? He painted this beautiful scene, _Liberty Leading the People._ It was wonderful because we were in Paris during the 1830 revolution, that’s the focus of the painting. You should have seen him in 1830: Kakashi looked terrific on top of the barricades!”

Unchecked, exuberant, Gai was rambling, on and on and on... 

Even though Kakashi barely heard a thing, most of it becoming white noise, like broken television static or a dull monotonous lecture, he watched as Iruka kept eye contact with the immortal man, giving him an encouraging smile, his dark brown eyes soft and warm in the arcade lighting.

Strangely, Itachi was looking at Gai, too. He was listening. Listening to Kakashi’s old life.

“But you know, with all the 1848 revolutions, we were running from country to country! There weren’t planes back then, there weren’t even bullet trains!” Gai sighed dramatically, flinging up a hand in the air, before he returned his arm to Itachi’s chair, slinging it all the way across the back, almost touching the demon’s slender shoulders. 

“We had a pair of horses that were so quick, it felt like we were flying. I was so excited by everything – it took me a full six months before I realized Kakashi kept drinking soldiers and politicians wherever he went!”

Next to him, Iruka made an amused little sound. He squeezed Kakashi’s thigh under the table.

“You know, I always follow Kakashi into battle, but, back in 1848, I had to lead him from place to place! He still fought magnificently as a drunkard - but, _mon Dieu_ , trying to herd him from Italy up to France to overthrow the king (again!), I’ve never faced such an opponent. He dislocated my jaw and nearly broke my leg! But then he was so sweet to me in Paris. Even when we were rallying the people, he kept stopping and buying croissants for me.” 

Leaning over to Itachi, Gai said in a quieter tone, which was still a shout for a normal man: “I absolutely love croissants.” But then, back again to Iruka, he was loudly proclaiming, a pleased grin spread across his broad face: “Kakashi was so worried I would burn to death in the fires, he held my hand for three days and refused to let me go!”

Kakashi made a face at Gai as well as the memory. He _had_ held Gai’s hand for much of the 1848 February Revolution, but that was because he remembered Gai being so overjoyed to aid the French after the 1789 Revolution that he was acting reckless and far too bold. He insisted on diving through fires to save civilians, like he couldn’t die from his skin burning to blackened crisps. It was just like the Nazis and Normandy, when Gai tried to take the machine gun post with that damn kid from Nebraska. He wasn’t going to lose his best friend to dumb mistakes, to chivalry and his code of honor, to –

“He’s different this time,” Itachi noted in a dry tone, shifting his black eyes away from Gai to Iruka, seeming like he was about to say something more, something else.

Kakashi looked sharply at the dark-eyed demon. He could feel the space where his soul had been undergoing an unexpected expansion and contraction, like a balloon filling too quickly with helium and then bursting horrifically. Kakashi’s instincts, exacerbated by blood-intoxication, enhanced by Naruto’s spiritual energy, warned him to shut up Itachi Uchiha, make him stop talking, he was about to say something wrong, something that would change things, something that would upset Iruka, his Iruka, his werewolf, his world-changer, his heart-breaker –

Suddenly Gai stood up. His hand clamped down on the demon’s shoulder with great force. “Let me walk you out, Itachi,” he announced with too-bright cheer. “I want to say my goodbye in private!”

Although he held his body tense and still, Itachi turned to stare upwards at the immortal man, his black eyes going wide. But, after a moment, he shrugged off Gai’s hand, stood, and nodded towards Iruka. 

“Thank you for taking care of Sasuke tonight.”

That was it. No apology for invading his brain, no regret for tearing through Iruka’s memories. 

Kakashi felt his fingers inch forward on the table: he wanted to crush Itachi’s spine into powder.

In contrast, Gai flashed both of them a blinding grin and gave an additional thumb’s up to seal the deal. “I’ll see you tomorrow, you two!” he declared joyously. “Don’t stay up too late!”

Then his best friend, clad in a forest green track suit, ushered his old sort-of kouhai out the arcade, as if they knew each other from high school and not through their mutual undead companion.

With their abrupt exit, Iruka stood up and went to the windows. Kakashi immediately followed, thinking and not thinking at the same time. He wasn’t particularly sure where they were going or why they were at the window, but he would do whatever Iruka wanted, now, forever. 

After a few seconds, Iruka gently tapped on the glass, bringing Kakashi’s attention to the small alleyway across the street from the arcade. It was night-time, it was dark in the city, it must have been hours after the schoolyard confrontation. They were near their apartment, this was the new arcade pizza restaurant that Naruto had whined about on the third day of Kakashi moving in, but Iruka had said it was special, that visiting here would be a treat. So apparently this was a treat day? What did people call it nowadays – was this a cheat day?

It had been a strange day, undeniably. Still stuck in the swirling mess of blood-intoxication and riding his chakra-high, Kakashi was already realizing the day was about to get even stranger.

As he followed Iruka’s sharp werewolf sightline, Kakashi seized on the image of Gai crowding Itachi in the dark alleyway across from the restaurant, the immortal’s muscular arm by the demon’s shining crimson eyes, black bangs, and bone-white skin. Even though Gai almost never made eye contact with Kakashi’s stolen-gifted eye, his friend was staring directly into both of Itachi’s – which were spinning wildly, the black enthralling markers moving at absurd speeds. Yet Gai appeared so confident and comfortable that Kakashi found himself tilting his head off to the side like a confused dog trying to understand the very bizarre thing occurring before him. 

And Itachi Uchiha, who Kakashi could envision even now sliding steel swords through European nobles and Asian royals and African kings and Latin American lords – 

_Itachi looked flustered._

A pink blush was thick on his pale cheekbones. His arms were firmly crossed over his chest, his shoulders tense and bunched. His back was flat against the brick alley wall. He seemed cowed by Gai – Maito Gai – immortal human – best friend – workout buddy – idiot who preferred protein smoothies and loved French croissants and ate Hawaiian pineapple-and-ham pizza –

“They’re going to kiss,” Iruka said, both breathless and confident.

Kakashi turned to stare at him, his wondrous little werewolf. All he could think was _Is Iruka drunk? Is he high, too?_ There was no way they would kiss, Itachi and Gai? They barely knew each other. Gai had stopped Kakashi and Itachi from killing each other several times, earlier today being the sixth time at least. Itachi and Kakashi and Gai were constantly at each other’s throats - even when they were working together assassinating men and women and overthrowing whole kingdoms and dictatorships and corrupt democracies – they were passing friends, maybe, on the best of days, and this wasn’t one of those -

“Oh,” Iruka whispered, voice tight and excited. “Look.”

Gai had leaned forward, then his lips were on Itachi’s, sincere and tender, using not the least bit of force. His whole body was under control: he looked like he was comfortable with the kiss but also like he was holding himself in check from going any further. Obito’s eye unhelpfully reminded Kakashi that he had seen Maito Gai kissing men and women in a similar way a few times – and now he was finally piecing together that those kisses – the kisses that Kakashi had caught Gai giving strangers – those weren’t strangers at all - _those were Gai’s spouses over the last two hundred years, those were his wives, those were his husbands_ -

Itachi wasn’t cowering against the wall anymore. He had put an inch between his back and the brick: he had pushed forward to meet Gai, and he was returning the kiss with a sort of enthused new energy that Kakashi had never expected of him.

As he stared and stood beside Iruka, both of them utterly rapt by the unfolding scene – Itachi uncrossed his arms and brought them both up to hold onto Gai’s waist. His long white fingers were stark against the forest-green of the track suit, further adding to the extraordinary oddity of the two of them kissing in the dimly-lit alleyway. 

But, when Gai moved his free hand to touch Itachi’s face, the demon abruptly recoiled, opening his eyes again, both of them fully crimson, their black sparkles catching in the street lighting. 

Immediately, without saying anything, Itachi left him behind in the alleyway, walking down the street, not once looking back at the immortal.

Then –

“I know you missed me, Itachi!” Gai exclaimed into the dark city streets with a wide, satisfied grin. He stepped onto the sidewalk and called after Itachi far too loudly: “It’s okay to admit it!”

Instantly, Itachi turned on his heel, stormed straight up to Gai, rose his right fist –

On instinct, Kakashi opened Obito’s eye and just barely caught the unbelievably crazy vision of Itachi Uchiha’s black demon form in its current unsettled state. It was provoked and aroused and raging. It was an incredible shadow with a hundred thousand pin-sized spikes turning into a million samurai swords. Its black mass was fluttering about like an agitated murder of crows. 

_Sharp feathers and sword-tips._

Itachi smashed into Gai’s left cheek and the black chain curse lazily rotating over his skin. Yet the immortal man didn’t even stumble after the blow. It was a dumbly impressive thing – in a much earlier time period, Kakashi had witnessed Itachi demolish castle walls one-handedly. 

Instead, as a shadow magic bruise began to spider-web across his face, Gai looked back at Itachi, his grin completely unchanged.

“Such tough love, Itachi,” he teased in a sing-song voice.

Hearing Gai’s words, the demon’s black spiritual form went even more erratic, the entirety exploding everywhere, although Itachi’s human face maintained its unyielding stony expression. 

Then Itachi shook his head slightly, barely indicating a single thing was happening within him – and he vanished down into his own human shadow, the rest of his demonic darkness receding with him through the cracked sidewalk.

Suddenly abandoned and alone, Gai further surprised Kakashi by laughing out loud and running a hand through his bowl-cut, bringing it back into shape after the force of the demon’s strike. He was still grinning to himself as he turned around and headed in the other direction… back to where Kakashi’s old apartment was, the one that he had rented before moving in with Iruka. 

“I’m tired.”

Iruka turned to Kakashi with such speed and intensity, it should have been alarming. He looked a little lupine for a second – his brown eyes briefly coloring yellow – the bone structure of his face altering and sharpening – but maybe it was a trick of the light, because Kakashi was tired, he was absolutely exhausted, it was hard to keep standing, all of a sudden he was having to lean against the wall to hold himself upright.

He felt Iruka’s arm around his waist, and he dropped his head on Iruka’s shoulder, breathing in deep, wanting to be like Iruka and swim in the scent of his dear werewolf. 

Then they were in a stranger’s car, a big bulky SUV, Sasuke and Naruto were in the back, fooling on their cell phones, and Iruka’s hand was back on Kakashi’s thigh, their fingers entangled tightly together. 

Iruka had so many scars, his fingertips were rough, his skin was brown and beautiful.

The shower was scalding hot. The drain was clogging with river debris. There was a deer by the river – had he broken her legs? Had he killed that bear in the cave? Where were those girls from the hotel… were they safe now, were they already back on the street, did they go home?

When… when was the last time he had taken a shower? He’d never used Obito’s eye to watch Iruka in the shower, but he could still flawlessly recall the strange scarred body of his lover in the water spray, over and over and over, day after day after day after day –

He walked past the living room with a towel around his waist.

The Nine-Tailed Fox was a boy named Naruto Uzumaki, and he was friends with Sasuke Uchiha, the younger semi-abandoned brother of Itachi Uchiha, the demon who he once worked with in an elite secret society, who had just kissed his single surviving friend, a cursed immortal human named Maito Gai, and they had all met today at a middle school and been together at an arcade, and with them – with them – had been -

Iruka Umino had so many photographs in his hallway, in his bedroom. He was well-loved, he was beloved by many. He had been a teacher, he was a teacher, that was certain. There were silly sketches kids had drawn fancifully on homework and the ends of exams, each lovingly pinned to a cork board in the corner of the bedroom. Iruka’s parents were dead, he was an orphan at a young age, they’d been killed by the Demon Fox, the Nine-Tailed Fox, Naruto Uzumaki, the boy in his living room, the boy he made breakfast for, the boy both of them made breakfast for.

Kakashi curled into a ball on the floor of Iruka’s bedroom. He was wearing the same clothes that he’d borrowed from Iruka when he had first moved in, Iruka’s old shirt and overwashed sweatpants. He was tired. He was absolutely exhausted. He –

He felt Iruka’s calloused, scarred fingers brush over his neck where Iruka had once bit him.

Keeping Obito’s eye closed, Kakashi looked upwards at the werewolf he’d fallen in love with. Iruka’s expression was all darkened concern, flooded with worry. His fingers brushed through Kakashi’s still wet hair, petting him, caressing him, comforting him. It was nice, so nice.

But, instead of saying that, Kakashi murmured, closing his other eye, fatigue pouring over him, chasing ugly and slow the blood in his veins: “I’m trash, you have to know that by now.”

And Iruka’s response, said without a second’s pause:

“Come to bed with me.”

Kakashi felt like he was Atlas holding up the heavens, a burden of unimaginable size heavy on his shoulders. He couldn’t handle it anymore. His body was breaking down. The Fox chakra was fading from his system, the blood easing down in its intensity. He had gone too far, done too much. He was thinking about Rin, his hand thrust through her gown and corset and ribcage, her white feathers sticking to her red blood slathered across his arm. He was thinking about Obito, his face and body crushed in the collapse of the stone church in Lisbon on All Saints’ Day, his generous offer to surrender his eye in his death throes. He was thinking about –

Iruka pulled a blanket over them as he laid down behind Kakashi. 

His lips were on the back of Kakashi’s neck. Iruka kissed him there softly but with resolve. Iruka’s mouth was gentle on Kakashi’s skin, the spot over his spine, the way a mother dog might pick up a pup, the way a wolf might play-nip at a friend, the way a werewolf might mark a mate. 

Kakashi realized Iruka had been saying something to him, something, something…

“I love you, Kakashi. Of course I’ll marry you.”


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, what happens when your usual perspective character is unconscious the whole chapter?
> 
> It's Time For A Guest Perspective!!
> 
>  
> 
> ____

He was happy to be alive.

It was 7:24am on February 9, 2019. He had already rescued kittens from a dumpster (what monstrous people exist in this world!) – helped an elderly woman return home from her morning prayers (such devotion in these tough times!) – walked the young Rock Lee to boarding school (what an excellent student! such promise! such a good heart!) – and now he was about to visit Kakashi’s werewolf, the man named Iruka Umino, the one with compassion carved into his supernaturally-fortified skeletal frame. 

“It is me, Maito Gai!” he called into the intercom, striking a pose to assure Iruka that it really was him, he was keeping his promise from the night before!

Fortunately, he was convincing: Iruka Umino buzzed him upstairs with an excited but exhausted exclamation of his name.

The werewolf was young, but Gai found that all werewolves were young. He was thrilled to see Iruka Umino again, even though he could tell the other creature was obviously burdened by fatigue. 

He had done the dignified thing and not researched Iruka after Kakashi had admitted to moving in with him ( _a companion! Kakashi’s first companion!_ ). He knew he could have found so very many things about Iruka with his high-level security clearance in the intelligence agencies around the world.

Without a doubt, he could have found out everything about Iruka Umino, the little young werewolf who had won Kakashi’s heart.

But Gai was honorable: he didn’t pursue external information on Iruka. He would find out about the werewolf from their unfolding friendship, from loud laughter over beer, from early morning training exercises, from long embraces before special occasions, from –

Well, from moments such as this one!

“Oh, Gai,” Iruka Umino all but whimpered as he opened the door. Stress and weariness contorted Iruka’s scarred features, but his eyes shone with hope upon seeing him.

Gai happened to like the werewolf’s facial scar. He thought it perfect and poetic that Kakashi had found another creature with a matching scar: Iruka’s was horizontal where Kakashi’s went vertical. Plus, Iruka’s skin was a lovely tan-brown hue, while Kakashi had always been alabaster-white, as far as Gai knew. The scars, the colors -

It was feng shui! 

It was yin and yang!

“It’s like you said,” Iruka muttered, running his fingers into his long hair in frustration. “He won’t wake up.”

Although Gai had met many werewolves in his three hundred years of existence, he had not had the joy of sleeping with any of them, partially because of what he was seeing so soon with Iruka Umino this morning. The creature before him was so wonderfully devoted in such a short time!

It was absolutely clear that, even though Kakashi had certainly slept, Iruka had not been able to rest. Gai would not have been surprised if Iruka Umino hadn’t slept whatsoever he was so worried. 

He looked terrible. He looked like he’d been mugged and kicked into a waste-choked gutter.

It was such a beautiful sight that Gai nearly went faint from happiness.

“Let’s look at him together, dear Iruka!” he said to the werewolf, carefully taking off his shoes and directing Iruka further into the apartment to where he assumed his Eternal Rival was resting hung-over.

The place was packed with love: Gai could see tiny touches of Kakashi here and there, adding to the warm symphony of fondness and care that was already present long before his arrival. 

There were new British things on the kitchen counter, originating from Kakashi’s most recent favorite country since the Great War. Although Gai had been horrified by the changes in technological warfare, Kakashi had been so motivated to save the United Kingdom that he came dashing in on cavalry, on foot, on aircraft, on ship, every year until the war was over. 

There were plenty of newspapers in the recycling bin, a result of Kakashi’s notorious reading habit. Gai had been with him when he’d begun reading the news around the late 1790s, the height of the Revolutionary era. For centuries now he devoured current politics before setting it aside and changing over to romance novels, erotica, manga, and fan fiction in the evening. 

There were a few stray silver-grey hairs on the visibly broken recliner, a sure sign that his Eternal Rival had found his chosen perch that he would never, ever abandon. Sometimes it was tree-tops, other times the highest castle tower or a top-floor apartment. Here, the highest spot in the living room was the old burgundy chair, where seemingly Kakashi Hatake had made his preferred place.

Iruka was flawlessly silent as he led Gai to his and Kakashi’s bedroom. He was a good werewolf, but he lacked a certain finesse that Gai had come to expect of werewolves in the modern era with so many gathered in cities. Iruka didn’t seem to know specific advanced movements, ones that werewolves learned at an older age, those not taught to pups and demonstrated later by pack leaders. 

A scarred lone werewolf in the big city – and he had won Kakashi’s heart! 

Beautiful, just beautiful.

Inside the bedroom, Kakashi appeared as he always did when recovering from a blood binge – except now he was covered by a fuzzy blue blanket up to his chest. He was unconscious and laying on his side but was also sprawled across the entire bed. One of his arms was flung so far over he was nearly hitting the nightstand, close to where Iruka had put a glass of water for him. It was still filled to the brim: Gai imagined it would be like that for several more days, even if Iruka didn’t know that just yet. 

His Eternal Rival’s too-white skin was already losing the bright red color that Gai recognized from when Kakashi was blood-drunk. 

It was always possible in this state to touch Kakashi, and, as usual, Gai felt no shame taking advantage of the situation. He ruffled Kakashi’s disheveled silver hair – and garnered no reaction from his longest-living friend. Gai couldn’t help but grin at the sight before him: he had truly never imagined that he would one day see Kakashi Hatake spread comfortably in a lover’s bed while recovering from a week of rowdy blood-enhanced behavior. 

It was glorious, and good, and beautiful, and Gai nearly wept from the sheer majesty of it, but Iruka was suddenly at his side, gripping his elbow surprisingly hard ( _good, wonderful! the werewolf has strength!_ ).

“What is it?” Iruka asked, panic bubbling through his voice. “Is he okay?”

“Of course!” Gai declared, moving to half-embrace the werewolf in an attempt to comfort him. He squeezed Iruka tight as he explained cheerily, “Kakashi just has a hangover! He drank too much, then he had a very good time, so now he’s sleeping it off. You should have seen him in ’99 – I mean 1799, of course! – he was asleep for a full month when the French Revolution finally ended. People thought I was stealing corpses from churchyards.”

Iruka didn’t struggle in the embrace, which Gai secretly thought was quite admirable. But, then again, he wasn’t looking at Gai: no, he was staring with overflowing care and concern at Kakashi, still unmoving and unbreathing on the men’s bed. That was even more admirable, and it _really_ made Gai want to cry in joy, but he instead released Iruka Umino and suggested brightly:

“Why don’t we have tea, Iruka? I can answer any other questions you have!”

As to be expected, Iruka was incredibly polite: he nodded in agreement and moved out of Gai’s loose hold on him. But, before they left the bedroom, the werewolf petted Kakashi’s hair back into place like he was a fever-sick child sleeping off illness. The sight filled Gai’s chest cavity with a pleasant warmth so radiant that he could feel his eyes flashing golden!

Iruka made them both tea, although he notably did _not_ use Kakashi’s British teapot. Perhaps it was a new addition to their home? Was it too old for such a modern, hip werewolf as Iruka Umino? … Would he not like Gai’s present? Things to consider, things to contemplate…!

Unwilling to take Kakashi’s place, Gai deliberately sat on the couch. He next watched Iruka contemplate where to sit. The werewolf seemed to consider the broken chair, but he must have also decided that was Kakashi’s precious spot, so he sat down beside Gai. Clearly a good and conscientious host, Iruka angled his body so they could both see each other as they sipped their morning tea. 

For a second, Iruka seemed a little flustered before he suddenly confessed, “Thank you for coming, Gai. I know we just met, but I’m glad you’re here to tell me that what Kakashi is going through is normal for him. I was so worried.” Iruka paused, dropping down his gaze. He ran his calloused finger over the rim of the cup, dipping into a sizeable chip in the ceramic. “I don’t know much about him, but I… I want him to be happy. Happy and safe.”

Gai did cry, then, which was apparently rather alarming to Iruka, because the werewolf went pale and tried to apologize, but Gai waved his free hand in the air, pushing away any concerns. 

“You are a wonderful match for him!” he announced, delirious relief making him feel like he’d just won a hard-fought battle. “I’m so happy my Eternal Rival has found such a good partner.” 

He had to forcibly stop himself from adding: _Kakashi has experienced so many terrible things!_

Normally, he would have been spilling out a thousand secrets when faced with such an astoundingly pure person, but Gai remembered Itachi’s warning from the night before, and he kept his mouth shut for once. 

But Iruka Umino was observant. Itachi had also mentioned _that_ to him: the werewolf was keenly sensitive, strangely so, more than a standard werewolf. His dark eyes sharpened as he studied Gai; he seemed to notice the unfinished sentence, but he didn’t call Gai on its absence, and instead he tilted his head to the side, looking extraordinarily investigative.

Gai was about to say how much he enjoyed seeing Kakashi with an attentive partner during his hangover, but Iruka interrupted him in a low voice, all while staring intently at him.

“How long have you been with Itachi?”

The question was unexpected, and it made Gai lose track of time.

One second, he was with Kakashi’s cute little werewolf in living room that smelled like burnt bacon and breakfast tea.

The next, he was in Andy Warhol’s ex-boyfriend’s private hotel suite, surrounded by avant-garde pop artists, go-go girls, street people, and drag queens. As usual, he was the largest person there, and nearly the oldest living being with the exception of an ancient vampire woman in bell bottoms and an open black leather jacket with nothing else underneath. She had already winked at him, not knowing he was immortal like Kakashi could tell with his demon eye. She simply thought he was attractive, just like many of Warhol’s ex-lover’s friends, including the ex-lover himself. 

But Gai wasn’t in the hotel suite for sex. He did not have sex outside of marriage; he only had sex with his precious person… people. There had been eight thus far. Eight precious people.

Yet he was alone in 1969. A year prior, during the revolutionary 1968, Gai had seen his Eternal Rival quite a lot, but after his most recent blood binge, Kakashi had vanished once again.

Due to his popularity and big personality, Gai had been invited to a few different Moon Landing parties when word spread the United States of America would land a man on the moon over the summer. He’d only accepted this particular one because he’d accidentally booked a room down the hall before he realized the celebration was next door. 

It was July 20, 1969, and the first human was going to walk on the moon. Knocking on Andy Warhol’s ex-boyfriend’s hotel suite, Gai was greeted by a blonde human in a yellow baby doll dress who ignored his bushy eyebrows and instead eye-fucked his pectoral muscles. 

He entered to loud cheers by human strangers already drunk and high on pills and life.

Over the next hour, he ate a slice of strawberry cheesecake, drank ‘Rocket Fuel’ (chilled champagne, white wine, and gin, very delicious, not that he could get drunk anymore), watched the news on the television screen, and smiled at the delighted, intoxicated humans surrounding him. 

Of all the many different supernatural creatures that could have been at this particular Moon Landing party, there was only the vampire. After hundreds of years befriending Kakashi Hatake, he could easily recognize vampires: their graceful movements were leisurely and confident, but they emanated lazy power. During his life thus far, Gai had purposefully sharpened his skills in identifying non-humans. He’d crisscrossed the planet dozens of times; he’d met everything from legendary youkai to shapeshifters to -

To demons like Itachi Uchiha, who was currently standing by the front door of the private suite, seeming utterly disinterested with the Moon Landing party. 

… and also looking very unimpressed with Maito Gai, who he’d instantly caught staring at him.

Always trying to engage the blank-faced, shadow-cloaked demon, Gai waved while grinning his best grin, but, as usual, Itachi revealed nothing and responded not at all.

No worries, though! Itachi had never once reacted to him. After all, it had only been 157 years. Gai always gave it his best, privately hoping that he could entice the demon into some form of friendship. He imagined he might succeed after a few more centuries. 

Within the first minute of meeting Itachi, Gai had been forced to put the demon in a head-lock, preventing him from dragging his Eternal Rival down into watery darkness as they all were tossed about a storm-battered ship in the Atlantic Ocean. He’d already learned not to look Kakashi in his demon eye while fighting him – or trying to embrace him! – and he could immediately tell this demon was from the Uchiha clan and would need to be treated similarly.

Apparently, very few people got close enough to Itachi Uchiha to touch him. He had not appreciated Gai manhandling him: the demon had broken Gai’s arm in half, shattering his elbow in several places, and destroyed Gai’s nose with a well-placed punch to the middle of his face. But Gai had hung on regardless of his mess of broken bones. He knew it should be painful, even though it wasn’t, not really, not anymore. Kakashi had scolded the restrained Itachi so thoroughly that Gai himself felt flushed with shame, and eventually Itachi had slipped the hold, disappearing into shadow and scowling at both of them on his way out.

After that, they’d managed to work together, particularly when Hell’s goals aligned with that of Kakashi and Gai in their attempts to protect humanity, especially when it was self-destructing.

But Gai remembered quite well Kakashi’s story of Itachi Uchiha massacring his demon clan and how he’d left his young brother alive. He had marveled when learning the young thing had gone into stasis, destined to awake at some unknown point in the future. As the only survivor of his murdered family, Itachi slunk about the world with dead red eyes and black magic skin.

None of that explained why Itachi was at this particular 1969 Moon Landing party. Curious and determined to try to establish friendship once again, Gai started to walk towards him.

At that exact moment, the television screen showed a pale astronaut dropping down from the spacecraft in grainy black-and-white detail.

There were soft-spoken words from the speakers: a brown-skinned drag queen in a lavender-purple wig screamed for people to shut up so she could hear what was happening. 

_“That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”_

The huge hotel room, filled with a full rainbow of balloons and of all kinds of liquor, erupted in celebratory cries and cheers – 

And then the camera shook on the moon, and the screen went _**white,**_ and then **_so did the room_** , and _**so did everything outside the hotel windows.**_

Acting on instinct and the highest ideals of friendship, Gai searched for Itachi in the hotel suite.

The blinding whiteness went away, leaving the humans stunned, responding in a wide and diverse range of ways, from silence to crying to screaming. But Gai didn’t care, not at all. He was already across the room and holding up Itachi Uchiha, who he had found collapsed on his knees with both hands on his face, his fingers and black hair covering his expression entirely. 

The demon was shaking badly, his whole thin frame moving erratic and unstable. 

Gai made his next decision without a coherent thought in his brain. He pulled the shuddering demon out the door, swept him into a fireman’s carry, and brought Itachi to his nearby hotel suite. He was constantly and mindlessly saying comforting things, reassuring things, whatever he could. He was speaking English, Chinese, Russian, Spanish, Latin, Cherokee. He wished he knew Itachi’s demon language; he was furiously cursing himself for not learning it sooner.

Yet Itachi had enough of it when Gai closed the door behind them.

Although smaller in every way, the demon was supernaturally strong. Still covering his face, Itachi stood straight for a single second, then shoved Gai against the shut door before collapsing yet again, this time taking Gai with him. They immediately became entangled together, their limbs twisting every which way. As they hit the floor, Gai just barely managed to avoid Itachi slamming a knee into his groin. He only saved himself by capturing both of Itachi’s legs and spreading them wide open so the demon ended up straddling his thighs in a suddenly and fearfully intimate position. 

After that, however, he had no other opportunity to rescue himself, because, without warning, Itachi Uchiha pressed his forehead hard into Gai’s sternum. His tied-back black hair was in stark contrast against Gai’s olive-green turtleneck. Even pressed close against him, the demon was still shaking terribly, causing Gai to move, too, as consequence. His slim shoulders were moving at insane speeds and in irregular spasms. His thighs forced Gai’s legs together with almost agonizing intensity. 

Several minutes later, when Itachi finally moved his hands away from his face, he still didn’t expose his expression. Instead he grabbed Gai’s muscular shoulders with a brutal, remorseless strength that seemed oddly familiar. Although he was very much with Itachi in his dark hotel room, Gai remembered where he’d seen such power: two decades before when Kakashi smashed through a cement wall to save Private Danny Baker during the Invasion of Normandy.

It was unrestrained strength, a strength borne from fear. 

… meaning Itachi was unguarded… and afraid. 

“How can I help?” Gai asked as quietly as he could while staring down at the demon’s dark hair. He kept his hands on the floor beside to Itachi’s trembling trouser-clad thighs. He’d forced Itachi into a dozen head-locks and a few non-consensual embraces after victories, but this was no time for quick movements without caring about the consequences. 

No, this was strange.

Very strange.

Itachi lifted his head so that his mouth wasn’t mashed against Gai’s chest. He was nearly inaudible, but Gai had learned long ago how to hear even the softest of whispers.

“A lunar witch cast a spell to cleanse Earth.”

He couldn’t help himself: Gai echoed, incredulous and confused and loud, “There’s a witch on the moon who’s trying to cleanse the Earth?! Of what? Of humans? But everyone at the party is fine! I’m fine! Only you –” 

Just as the epiphany occurred to him two seconds too late, Itachi gritted out, raw and wrecked like the meat of fallen men: “She saw demons on Earth. She wants us dead. She’s trying to make me mortal.”

Knowing full well that he was risking his arm, Gai touched Itachi’s chin and gently tilted upwards to see the demon’s face. Shockingly, Itachi allowed it, even as his whole body was in wicked shaking protest to the spell still surging through him. 

Gai finally saw why Itachi had been shielding himself: his eyes, most frequently a matte black, had returned to its familiar magical crimson hue with dark spots lit and sparkling. 

_… but now there was blood draining from Itachi’s eyes._

The pair of continuous red streams stunned Gai. He knew Itachi didn’t bleed: he had once seen the demon take a 12-pound cannon-shot directly through his chest. The subsequent hole had filled in first with black shadow before turning back into a Chinese military uniform. According to Kakashi, demons were like that; they didn’t bleed as humans did, because they weren’t humans. The slender black-haired shape that Itachi wore around him and Kakashi was an illusion, a clever guise, a technique to trick humans and other supernatural creatures.

_… but now Itachi was on Gai’s lap with blood falling from his eyes like human tears._

It was strange – and scary – and beautiful. 

Horrifically, Gai suddenly realized that the feeling of Itachi clinging to him, straddling his hips, truthfully confessing what was happening to him – it was _all_ strange – and scary – and beautiful. 

“What can I do for you?” Gai found himself whispering. He was surprised at how steady he sounded: his heart was wilder than it ever had been, and he’d fought in dozens of conflicts and had thoroughly loved all of his eight spouses.

_… but now with a bleeding, shivering demon desperately embracing him, he was worried his immortality curse wouldn’t prevent a sudden heart attack._

For reasons unknown, Itachi’s dark eyebrows narrowed in anger, and then he said evenly, forcefully, “You’re never this kind to Kakashi when he’s sick.”

“What? What do you mean?” Gai found himself sputtering, staring back at the weakened demon, feeling increasingly insulted. He insisted, ignoring the way that Itachi’s fingers dug even harder into his shoulders as he spoke: “I’m always very gentle with Kakashi!”

“I saw you throw him over the Great Wall of China after he passed out in battle,” Itachi accused, his voice full of venom. Even though he was still shaking from the onslaught of the witch’s spell, somehow his gaze never moved, remaining fixed on Gai’s eyes. His hands were tightening on Gai’s shoulders, making the bones creak and groan from the pressure.

But Gai didn’t care about the pain. He hadn’t for centuries. Pain served only as motivation now.

“Kakashi has to drink blood every few months, you know that,” Gai said seriously, moving his hands from the carpeted floor to catch hold Itachi’s trembling clothed waist. “If I took care of him every time he was drunk or hungover, we would have lost a half-dozen wars. He can handle being thrown around! He heals every time he sleeps. He doesn’t have a single scar.”

“I don’t have any scars, either,” Itachi interjected suddenly.

He sounded oddly competitive; it caught Gai off-guard. He found himself impulsively running his hands up and down Itachi’s sides to try and comfort him.

Keeping their gazes together, Gai spoke much more softly as he explained, “Kakashi doesn’t shake. He doesn’t fall apart. He just goes still. He numbs out. He loses himself and disappears for days, months, sometimes years. I can’t take the chance and be kind for too long. He’s afraid of friendship… he’s afraid of love.”

Itachi’s red-and-black eyes narrowed even further. Human blood was smeared across his face and was still wet and streaming down his cheeks. His grip was beyond dangerous on Gai’s shoulders and – suddenly, very suddenly - he cracked a segment of Gai’s collarbone. It hurt some, but not really, not so much in the larger scheme of things. Gai didn’t even wince at the abrupt injury.

But the loud sound seemed to snap Itachi out of his dark fixation. He loosened his hold to the point where he was barely touching Gai’s shirt, no longer putting weight on the man’s body.

Then, unexpectedly, he used his insidious demon eyes on Gai.

It was obvious that he’d done so. The feeling was familiar: an unearthly entity rooting back in his timeline, thrashing through memories, ripping into old sights, reviving visions of the dead. He had fought with Kakashi enough to know what to do in this situation. The first few times, Gai had been shocked and appalled, offended and upset, but he’d gotten over it, treating the psychological invasion like a fighting technique. He’d created a countermove long ago for demon eyes and their cold, callous pursuit of truth in the deepest parts of himself. 

He followed the conquering creature as it wove through his memories, keeping track of what it saw and forcing it back out the way it came to end the intrusive spell. 

However, unlike Kakashi, who had to learn how to use his black magic eye, Itachi was born with his.

He was ruthless and precise.

He went right for what he wanted… which was Gai’s spouses, all of eight of them.

Itachi went backwards in time with Gai chasing him the whole way.

Sensing his hunter close behind him, the demon moved rapidly, tearing through the past.

By the time that Itachi saw Gai combing his first wife’s wispy blonde hair as she stared up at him, weak and cold and covered with sweat – he was grabbed and tossed back into the real world. 

But the damage was done: Gai realized he was crushing Itachi’s hipbones, made briefly real by the mortality spell, only because the demon made an incredibly odd high-pitched sound, his strange eyes going wide.

It was a sound of pain, true human pain.

“Why would you do that?” Gai growled out, unable to stop himself, even though he knew he was physically hurting Itachi, even if he didn’t understand how. “I wouldn’t lie to you about them. If you asked me, I would have told you _every excruciating detail_ about them.” 

Gai could hear himself getting louder, angrier, but he’d never seen them all like that, lined up, all of eight of them, living and loving and dying, and suddenly he was essentially shouting in Itachi’s startled, blood-streaked face: “I’d tell you about Katia Chávez and how she left me when we realized I could never have children, and the names of all of her great-great-great grandchildren spread across the world, unaware that her favorite things in life were sunny Sunday mornings and sleeping in my arms.”

He was leaning in closer, his fury making him disregard Itachi’s dangerous magical eyes.

“Or Jae-gyu Park and how he died five years ago, and how his parents said he was dead to them because he fell in love with a man, so I buried him with my bare hands by our farm, and I never go back there, because I will _never_ die, even though _I keep seeing them die_.”

Unbeknownst to Gai until he finally finished his rant, Itachi had stopped shaking. The lunar witch’s attempt to make him mortal had apparently failed sometime during his speech. Or maybe the demon had finally fought it off, it was impossible to tell. Regardless, the spell was no longer devastating Itachi’s body: he’d visibly regained his composure, his eyes were no longer bleeding.

After a moment of stillness between them, Itachi moved his hands slowly upwards to stroke Gai’s broad face. He smudged blood through Gai’s tears as they flowed down his cheeks. His expression stayed as empty as it always was, but a new ghostly haze of regret was now there, too.

“You loved all of them,” Itachi said, quiet and surprised.

Gai felt his own terrible tension start to fade. He hadn’t even realized he was crying while he said such harsh, hurt, terrible things to the other man. He lessened his grip on Itachi’s hips and then brushed over them repeatedly, wordlessly trying to apologize for his violence. 

He nearly dropped his gaze away from Itachi’s, instinctively knowing he should avoid eye contact with the demon. He almost moved his head back against the closed door in an attempt to avoid the unusual but truthfully enjoyable contact between them. 

Nevertheless, Gai stopped himself from doing anything and replied, feeling tired and haunted, “Of course I did. I would have told you that.”

“Humans lie,” the demon countered coldly. His eyes remained ready for magic, but they had stopped spinning, gone stagnant. The bright red blood had begun to dry on his pale cheeks.

“I don’t,” Gai immediately retorted, frowning at him. 

He had the sudden urge to pull the elastic tie out of Itachi’s hair. He bet he could reach up from Itachi’s waist and do it before the demon could stop him. He knew the tie was as much as Itachi’s illusion as the rest of his human form, but still – it was a deliberate decision on Itachi’s part to keep his hair up – … what might happen if Gai begged him to let his hair down?

Instead of that, he found himself asking in confusion: “Did you think that I loved Kakashi like I loved my partners?” 

When Itachi didn’t react in any way, not in any single little way whatsoever, Gai blinked away his last few tears and stopped moving his hands on the demon’s waist. 

“I don’t love Kakashi like that,” he said firmly, staring deeply into Itachi’s intense and unchanging eyes. “He is my Eternal Rival and my best friend. I would save him from anything and everything, including you, including death itself, but the man or woman who will become Kakashi’s lover has not yet entered his life. I know Kakashi has been lonely for a long time, but I’m not the right person for him. I know he has a precious person, but it is not me. Considering everything we have been through together, I see him as my brother.”

A moment later, Itachi’s long fingers stopped caressing Gai’s face and then drifted backwards, threading far back through Gai’s black hair. 

In the insightful part of his brain not totally captivated by what was being done to him, Gai recognized that the two of them had matching dual streaks down their faces – Itachi’s made of blood and Gai’s from his tears.

“Why were you mad I was being gentle with you?” he wondered aloud, trying not to sigh at the wonderful feeling of Itachi’s fingernails scratching across his scalp.

In a peculiarly detached way, the demon answered, unceasing in his physical attention to Gai, “You were treating me differently than how you treat other people. I didn’t like what it meant.”

“… what did it mean?”

Itachi chose to respond by kissing him. It was surprisingly soft and kind: if Itachi wasn’t so undeniably himself, with his dark magic eyes, black hair, pale skin, and blood drying on his face, Gai would have thought that this was an advanced illusion by a cruel and monstrous villain. 

It only took Gai a second to comprehend and accept Itachi’s unspoken point, and then he was deepening the kiss and eliciting a dark, delightful groan from deep within the demon. His hands shifted from Itachi’s sides to his ass in short order, and he ground against Itachi with the sort of strength that won him battles and changed the course of wars. Itachi was initially reserved, but, so soon after that, he became heated and lewd, panting against Gai’s bloodied, tear-stained cheek and breathily confessing things that Gai had _never, ever_ imagined the demon would admit to him or anyone else. 

“Gai…? Are you okay?” 

He startled and stared up at Iruka Umino - Kakashi’s werewolf, his companion, his lover.

It wasn’t July 20, 1969 anymore.

It was February 9, 2019. _Almost 50 years later._

“Of course I’m fine!” Gai declared loudly in surprise and embarrassment before downing the rest of his tea. He placed it on the coffee table and stood up just as abruptly. “I apologize, Iruka! I suddenly remembered I left something back at my apartment for you and Kakashi. I’ll come back later today with it.”

He knew he was blushing and acting weird: Iruka looked amused with him but also a little alarmed, too. He wasn’t sure how long he’d been thinking about the past – he tried not to do that, not in front of other people, but it was hard not to do so! There was just so much that he’d lived through, and he lived so passionately, and he loved so much!

“That would be nice,” Iruka interrupted his thoughts. He sounded rather entertained with him. The werewolf was all smiles and loving warmth: it was easy to tell why Kakashi found him so appealing. After following Gai to the door and watching him put on his shoes, Iruka leaned against the wall and asked in a sly tone, “Will you let Itachi know that he’s also welcome to come by?”

It was impossible not to blush at that insinuation that he would see the demon soon, but Gai was a warrior, and he grinned at Kakashi’s werewolf, this fascinating Iruka Umino. While nodding away, he responded with glee: “Of course! I do not think he will visit Kakashi, but, then again, friendship is magic!”

“… isn’t that the motto of _My Little Ponies_?” Iruka asked, unable to hold back laughter. 

His joke had worked like a charm! He had lightened the mood! Good, excellent, great!

Gai stepped forward and clapped a hand on Iruka’s shoulder, nearly sending the werewolf spinning against the wall. But he caught the creature just in time and held him upright, making certain that their eyes met. He devoted himself to the seriousness of the situation and inquired with steadfast strength and tireless concern:

“Do you love him?”

It was rewarding to see Iruka Umino’s scarred face flood crimson. He really was quite the werewolf: Kakashi could not have fallen for a sweeter-looking soldier of the streets. Gai refused to let go until Iruka replied properly to him. He was prepared for wait a few days or decades depending on how much he had flustered the young werewolf.

But, no, Iruka was quick on his feet ( _on his paws!_ ) and answered, fearlessly focused on Gai and his own determined expression: 

“I love Kakashi. I would do anything for him.”

Gai smushed Iruka hard against his chest, wrapping his arms around the smaller creature. He laughed loudly over Iruka’s shoulder and proclaimed with real joy in his heart and voice, “I can’t wait for your wedding!” 

He could feel – and hear – the werewolf laugh nervously but with similar genuine delight. 

As Gai released Iruka from the intense embrace, he was pleased to hear the young man admit under his breath, “I’m really excited, too.”

Then Gai was out in the city street, and for once he was not worried about the state of his Eternal Rival. He shoved his hands down into his pants’ pockets; he was whistling a tune he’d heard on a jukebox sixty years prior. He was enjoying picturing Kakashi in a black tuxedo – no, a beautiful wedding kimono – no, a Scottish kilt from his adopted clan! And, although he knew quite well that Iruka Umino was a man and would be wearing something similar to Kakashi, he had the thrilling passing visual of Iruka in a traditional white Western bridal dress with a lacy veil over his pretty scarred face, and a blushing Kakashi lifting the fabric to experience their first kiss as a married couple! 

Oh, beautiful. Just so beautiful! And so very inspiring!

Suddenly, Gai found his stride slowing and his shoulders slumping down.

_… but now that his best friend was finally getting married… he had to wonder if Itachi would ever accept his marriage proposal._

_After all, it had been fifty years._


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is dedicated to eight precious people, the fine folks who commented on last chapter:
> 
> Raddd, EternalSurvivor, Theycallthewind, Artemispolarbear, ladyxdaydream, Hexadecimalrebooted, NathTE, and myownremedy.
> 
> Your comments were so flattering and inspiring, I couldn't help but write and update in short order. Thank you, you beautiful, clever sweethearts. I truly hope you enjoy this chapter. 
> 
>  
> 
> ___

There was a dark edge to the world.

Iruka did his best to ignore it as the week progressed. He looked forward to Maito Gai’s daily visits, which often ended with the massive man watching soap operas with him and Naruto. He readied Naruto for school and his extracurricular activities; he’d started to tutor him again, embarrassed that he’d let things slip since his relationship began with Kakashi. He even returned to his job at the hotel with the same enthusiasm he had when he first started working there.

But there was something wrong in the city. 

Whatever it was grew worse by the day. Iruka cuddled closer with Naruto on the couch. He let Gai’s hugs linger ever longer. He kept alert, looking for the change wherever he went.

At night, when he came back home to Kakashi sleeping in bed, Iruka pulled the man’s lean body into his lap and brushed his hair for hours. He looked out his bedroom window at the fluorescent bulbs in the street lights that lined his block. He tried to see the stars, but there was too much pollution, but he tried, he really tried. He knew the full moon was getting close; he could feel it down in his bones, in his muscles, in his nerves, in his spirit, in his soul.

Kakashi remained asleep. He was malleable like soft metal fresh from a forge. Iruka moved him a few times a day, adjusting him so they could sleep together, but also so he could caress Kakashi’s slowly-cooling skin. He always refreshed the glass of water he’d prepared that first day. He changed Kakashi’s clothing, too, not that they were getting dirty. He kissed Kakashi on the cheek every night, but nothing more, never anything more. The man was asleep. He was vulnerable.

Iruka had to take care of him. He had to protect him.

The night of the full moon occurred ten days after Kakashi slipped into dreamland. Although Gai warned him that it might take a while before Kakashi returned to consciousness, Iruka was truly unprepared for the wait. He wasn’t patient at all, he realized that now. He could handle the lack of an escort to work and even the lack of sex. But not seeing Kakashi on the broken recliner, and instead seeing him eternally resting in bed, it was making Iruka so impatient that he was considering taking up meditation. He wasn’t making mistakes at work, nor was he being grumpy with Naruto or Gai, but…

He was finding his fingers a little more panicked running through Kakashi’s fine silver hair. His heart felt like it was being crushed under stones when he looked over Kakashi’s soft sleeping face. 

Iruka almost cried the night before the full moon when he pressed his nose into Kakashi’s back.

Something was wrong, and Kakashi was still asleep. He couldn’t distinguish if the two were the same thing, or if they were different issues, but Iruka knew he would have to change back to a wolf soon, and it would leave Kakashi defenseless, and his soul was crumbling into pieces as a consequence.

The night of the full moon, Iruka kneeled on the floor by his bed, looking at his lover. He had sent Naruto to Sasuke’s apartment, saying that he would be fine, they would both be fine. His sweet darling son hadn’t wanted to go, worried as he was about them. But Iruka had been insistent, he’d even had to use his ‘dad voice,’ swiftly forcing Naruto’s surrender. 

Still, when Naruto had looked back over his shoulder at Iruka halfway down the block, it had been painful beyond reason, and Iruka had wanted to call after him and drag him back inside.

But he let the boy go. 

He wasn’t sure what was wrong, but he wouldn’t and couldn’t get Naruto involved. 

His werewolf brain was already turning to mush. It felt like warm porridge sloshing about his head. He could barely concentrate enough to stay still on the floor while studying Kakashi. Even through the ugly haze of light pollution and dark smog, the full moon was hot and scorching and demanding that he change, he should change, he should really change now.

But something was wrong. _Something was wrong._

Iruka knew he couldn’t hold off his transformation. He’d only done that once before when he was a pup. The mistake was seared into his memory like the first time he’d burned ramen for Naruto: horrible and humiliating. It was at the orphanage, and the other kids weren’t werewolves, but Iruka was, and he didn’t want to change in front of them. He tried to keep his primal urge at bay, but instead, he had made the whole thing so much worse.

The first sight of his own brown flesh on the floor terrified him... and them. 

More and more of him ripped open, then splattered messily onto the hardwood.

Strips of tan skin, chunks of red muscle, long thin strings of human nerves.

And then wolf muscle and brown fur sprouted up like spring grass across his skeleton. 

The children had been traumatized; he’d had to move to different orphanage. Iruka never made the same mistake again, always allowing himself to give into the impulse to shift into a wolf. He had not had a single problem since, not even when he adopted Naruto. As far as he knew, Naruto didn’t feel any instinctive need to transform. Iruka had never seen his fox form.

Iruka had promised himself he would never scare Naruto by putting off his transformation. He would never make Naruto witness the wolf tear out of him, wild and frantic, as he physically shed shredded parts of his human self.

But he wanted to delay it tonight as he stared at Kakashi.

His brain was degrading; it was regressing to animal instinct. He had not enough willpower to fight it off, but he could tell some parts of himself were still coherent and clever. Those parts were warning him in bright, blasting colors that something was wrong, something was wrong, something was wrong.

When the first long strip of his forearm started sizzling – and then sloughed off, hitting the bedroom floor with a wet bloody smack – Iruka closed his eyes and promised out loud:

“I’ll protect you, Kakashi. I’ll protect you with my life.”

The next hour was a blur, an awful horrendous blur. He was slashing open rats’ stomachs in the alleyway beside the apartment. He was catching pigeons in their roosts on nearby apartment rooftops and crunching their ribcages between his jaws. He was chasing stray dogs out of his street, but he wasn’t letting them go like usual. He was forcing them to fight. He was slamming down on their chests, shaking their throats, leaving open wounds and lifelong scars. He snarled at humans passing through the neighborhood. 

He stopped in the street when a luxury sportscar came flying down his block. It was a wealthy man slumming. He wanted to see what life was like in the rough sad sick part of town.

In one graceful jump, Iruka jumped on the hood of the speeding car.

He was less graceful when he smashed the window with his huge wolf head.

He was even less graceful when he alarm-barked through the shattered glass in the petrified human’s face. 

But he was fine, more than fine, when he walked up the black-iron fire escape ladder and stood atop of their apartment building.

Below him was Kakashi, he was safe, he would not be harmed, Iruka had scared away everything, anything, every last little thing, that could hurt him. 

… something was wrong. 

It was wrong, and it was on the rooftop with him.

Sometime in the night, he’d noticed that a heavy freezing rain was drenching the city, but he didn’t know when it started or how long it had been going on. His fur was already soaked through to his skin. The storm was still raging across the city as something black materialized on the roof in front of him.

Iruka was abruptly on his paws. He was baring his teeth; he was growling in warning.

Yet his instincts were saying something else: they were shrill opera singers of fear, screaming that he needed to run, he had to run, this was deadly, this was death, death is here now.

But his heart – it was howling -

_I have to protect Kakashi._

Iruka couldn’t stop himself from shaking in fear. He strangled the instinct to bow his head, to flatten his body in submission, to make high whining sounds of defeat. Instead, he straightened himself up even further, keeping his legs tight and taut and raising his head. He stared directly at the black thing –

It was a demon. It was absolutely a demon.

Once he understood Naruto’s new friend Sasuke was a demon, Iruka had spent time learning the boy’s strange scent. It wasn’t really a scent. It was the absence of a scent. It was nothingness. It was a shadow sliding over the moon. It was where something should have been, but instead there was nothing, and thus the void itself meant something.

The thing on his rooftop, on their rooftop, it was a demon. It had no scent. It was blank.

It wore black clothing. It had short black hair. Its face was terrifying: the right half was crushed, confusingly lined with age and stress and force. The other side was smooth as silk. Its eyebrows were narrowed, condescending, sickly amused with what it was seeing. It could tell Iruka was trying to defend the apartment, trying to guard Kakashi as he slept a floor below them.

Its left eye was a lake of purple, a dozen black circles spreading from the center.

Its right eye was familiar… It looked just like Kakashi’s left eye.

The demon was an Uchiha. It was a he, and he was an Uchiha.

Iruka’s back legs buckled. He hobbled for a second before he got himself upright again. The storm was relentless and cruel, marring his usually fine sight. But his instincts were on fire, burning words of horror into his mind, leaving pink-red scarred flesh of _run away, run away, run away_ all over his desperate racing thoughts.

But – but –

_Kakashi needs me. I have to protect Kakashi._

Iruka was growling ever louder as he looked down at the Uchiha demon’s chest. He knew not to look the man in the eyes; he’d made that mistake with Itachi, and he would never do it again. He could see enough of the demon that he could track him, follow him, prevent him from getting to –

Then the Uchiha stepped towards him, and Iruka’s instincts switched so hard that he was thoughtlessly running towards the demon, forgoing submission and insisting on aggression, and he leapt upwards to grab the man’s throat, but –

He went right through the demon. 

_Through him._

His thoughts swung around just as his body did. 

A trick of the eye? A demonic illusion? Something with the rain? The full moon? His blinding love for Kakashi? What had happened? What could demons do? _What couldn’t they do?_

Iruka skidded on the rooftop, unable to get his grip on the wet cement. He was shaking suddenly: it wasn’t just the cold storm-shower, it was fear, it was fear worse than before. He wasn’t going to win this. He couldn’t. He could not win against this demon. He was going to lose. He was going to die.

_I can’t die. Kakashi needs me. Kakashi needs my protection. I need to protect -_

He did it again, the same stupid thing, but he couldn’t restrain himself. 

Instead of jumping through the demon, though, this time –

This time the Uchiha caught him by the back of the neck and jostled him so hard he could feel his soft brain tissue smack the sides of his skull.

He went limp from pain.

He was suspended in the air, the rain slicking down his furred face. He’d closed his eyes from the agony of the demon’s grip, from being tossed about. Fat water droplets cascaded down his muzzle, dripped over his scar, slid across his gums, poured into his open jaw. He was delirious. So delirious. This was pain, this was pain, this was pain. This was painful. It was so painful. His spine – his spine –

The demon’s hand was by Iruka’s right eye, forcing it open.

_Kakashi… Kakashi._

Asleep underneath them. 

Soft silver hair.

_Mate._

Iruka bit down hard – and his teeth went through the Uchiha’s hand as if it was thin air.

But that’s wasn’t his play: he also kicked with his back legs, the ones numb and burning, and they connected with the demon’s torso, pushing him away, making him drop Iruka on the flooded cement.

He skittered away, halfway turned back, not letting the demon out of his sight.

Pain, pain, pain.

But – but – 

Protect. Kakashi. At. All. Costs.

His wolf body was weak, becoming weaker. He had to force himself to stay awake. He was shaking all over, his claws were making sharp sounds on the rooftop. He could feel every straining muscle tightly sewn to bone; he could feel his seizing nerves weeping flame.

He was going to die here. 

No, no, no. If he died, Kakashi died. 

Iruka remembered howling as a puppy. It was a strange memory, appearing out of nowhere. The rain was clogging his eyes, he couldn’t close them, he had them locked onto the demon’s chest. He wanted to slow down, figure out why he thought about it, that time that he practiced howling when he was small and young with his parents watching him, the two of them sitting beside each other as wolves. He had made a wobbly tiny noise in his throat, looking for their approval with hopeful eyes. His mom had encouraged him, giving a bigger, better howl, and his dad had joined in, his voice louder and stronger and bouncing off buildings. It was so good, it was such a reassuring sound, and, while Iruka was so much smaller and younger, he was big enough, and so was his voice when it joined theirs.

It was a howl, his first howl.

They had been a family. The three of them. They had been a pack.

He and Kakashi and Naruto. They were a family. 

_They were a pack._

Iruka howled. His voice was hoarse from being strangled, from the pain still rocking his system. But he made it work, he forced it to work. He grew louder, he was _loud_. He was shaking, and so was his howl, insecure and unsteady, but it carried through the storm. It rung across his city block, it dominated the neighborhood, it overwhelmed the rain.

And then bright white lightning struck the apartment rooftop.

Iruka stumbled backwards, afraid, almost singed by it. Trying to focus his eyes, he swept his head back up, confused crazed fear tumbling through him. What new horror was this…?? 

It was Kakashi Hatake.

He was wearing Iruka’s sweatpants and white gym-shirt.

The storm shower instantly soaked him, the fabric clinging to his pale skin. He had appeared directly in front of Iruka; he looked carefree, careless, unconcerned, even from behind. His silver hair had gone damp and stuck to his scalp. His thumbs were hooked into his pockets, easygoing and unworried. He was staring straight ahead at the demon, not looking back a second to check on Iruka to see what he was doing. He seemed perfectly at peace. 

… but it was just like the time they met on the hotel rooftop… when Kakashi had first sought Iruka after the full moon. 

Once again, Kakashi radiated pure tension.

The Uchiha demon didn’t move after his arrival.

Neither of them said a thing.

They looked at each other in the lightning storm.

Then… Iruka’s vocal cords betrayed him: he made the slightest, lightest, littlest whine. It was mostly from the pain of when the Uchiha had grabbed him so forcefully by the neck, but it was also the cold rain still crashing down upon him, and the rampant fear finally catching up with him and his long-suffering heart. He wanted to take it back the moment that he made it, but instead, surprising him, shocking him, his whine set an entirely new series of things into motion.

The very next second -

Kakashi’s hands left his pockets...

… and then the demon dropped into his own shadow, disappearing instantaneously.

For a slow strange moment, Kakashi stayed still. But, soon enough, he turned around, walked forward, and kneeled down to examine Iruka, wet and cold and shaking in the rain. He only had his right eye open: he had returned to his neutral expression from when they first met. His hands were considering and assessing as they ran through Iruka’s fur, checking for wounds, looking for sore spots, seeking out broken bones. He noticed the wound from where Iruka headbutted the sportscar window but kept moving. He paused significantly when he brushed over the back of Iruka’s head, where the Uchiha had caught him hard on the neck and put pressure on his spine. Kakashi made a small circle with his long fingers, tracing something out, and Iruka felt some of the pain ease, fade, dance away into the storm.

Without a word, Kakashi reached around and gently picked up Iruka’s large wolf body. He did so effortlessly; he walked through the storm like he was made of the element itself. They were down the fire escape ladders, then into their apartment hall window, then into the bathroom where Kakashi carefully placed Iruka in the bathtub like he was small and precious. 

The vampire was soaked from the rain, making him look like a beautiful actor in a romantic movie during a confession scene. It was distracting and dreamy, but, then, Iruka wondered if he was still rolling on adrenaline as well, making the sight more magical than it should have been. He watched Kakashi watch him for a long while, neither of them doing much of anything at all.

Finally, it must have been close to sunrise, because Iruka started to feel his skin itch, his fur weigh too much, and his bones moan in discomfort. He shook once, then twice, and returned to being a man, nude and sore and pitiful. He touched the back of his neck, pushing aside his long loose hair, wondering if being held so hard would leave a mark.

As he glanced up to see Kakashi’s reaction to him, he was surprised to catch the other man closing his left eye – his demon eye – his… his Uchiha eye.

Without speaking, Kakashi held out the fluffy white bathrobe. He helped Iruka put it on with impeccable chivalry, just how he had a month earlier under the ferry bridge. Instead of letting Iruka lead, which he always had done – this time Kakashi walked Iruka over to the broken recliner, where he sat down first. Then he pulled Iruka into his lap, arranging him with unnerving strength until Iruka was perfectly tucked up against him in a comfortable position.

Suddenly Iruka realized he’d been shaking the whole time. He flushed with embarrassment. In contrast, Kakashi looked like he was on a beach in the Caribbean, flipping through a novel, taking long sips of a Pina Colada. He was presently looking at Iruka’s neck with his right eye while holding Iruka in a relaxed but fixed embrace. He seemed utterly indifferent to what had happened on the rooftop. 

“Do you know him?” Iruka finally dared ask. 

He didn’t have many options on where to look, but he wanted desperately to see Kakashi’s full reaction, so Iruka purposefully moved back a bit to observe the man’s face. 

But Kakashi had no real reaction besides an affirmative nod. His single-eyed gaze stayed on Iruka’s neck. His arms continued to remain loose but sure. He was so beautiful. Without the blood-drunk red burning his cheeks, and the sweet blush Iruka sometimes inspired, Kakashi was a striking white marble statue, something from another time, something meant for a museum. 

Although he recognized he was pushing his luck, Iruka persisted anyway. He shifted further, trying to get into a position where he was looking at Kakashi’s open eye. When he finally managed to draw Kakashi’s incessant gaze from his throat, Iruka posed the rhetorical question that had suddenly occurred to him mid-fight:

“Is that the Uchiha who gave you his eye?”

Kakashi considered him for a second. He looked like a tired soldier struggling to put on a brave face in front of his family. Iruka had seen the expression before: Kakashi appeared the same way when he saw Sasuke on the playground, when he’d told Iruka about his eye, that it was an Uchiha demon eye and not his at all. 

But, unlike last time, Kakashi didn’t force away the expression. His fleeting sadness stayed on his face as he spoke for the first time since waking up. He gave only a concise sorrowed statement: “Yes, that’s him.”

Iruka ducked his head, musing on what it all meant, from the roof-top fight to his howl to the lightning bolt. Yet he hadn’t expected Kakashi to start running his fingers through his undone hair. He startled and glanced up, surprised by Kakashi’s gentle familiar touch. It was reassuring, releasing endorphins, making him feel even closer to the other man. _This was his Kakashi: safe, strong, home…_

He was suddenly worried about Kakashi’s well-being after such a long sleep, and he went to ask if he was okay – 

But, then, with his single eye following his fingers through Iruka’s hair, Kakashi interrupted him using a strange tone, “Did I ask you to marry me?”

Iruka was even more surprised to find himself blushing, really fully blushing. He looked over the other man’s face, trying to sense if he was upset or concerned or _anything_ , but Kakashi was back to being a Mona Lisa sequel, ceaselessly enigmatic. So Iruka answered slowly while wrapping his arms further around the vampire’s shoulders, “Gai sort of asked me on your behalf.”

Kakashi’s gaze cut over to Iruka’s so sharply it almost hurt. But his next words were feather soft:

“Did you say yes?”

He was so earnest and worried that Iruka leaned up and kissed him hard on the mouth. After pulling away, Iruka rubbed his scarred cheek against Kakashi’s own old injury and replied, “Of course I did. I love you.”

Iruka was astonished by how quickly Kakashi moved out from underneath him and dropped to his knees in front of the broken recliner. He offered Iruka his left hand with easy elegance. Once their palms slid together, Kakashi kissed each of Iruka’s knuckles, then turned over his hand and kissed Iruka’s wrist right where major arteries ran blood through his body. 

Kakashi was deadly serious and so devoted it inspired goosebumps.

He simply said:

“I love you, too.”


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Y'all are beautiful, each of you.
> 
> This one is for all the darlings waiting on the pier.
> 
> While I'm wading through the ocean of life, looking out at dark stormclouds, I think of you, remember your words, and want desperately for home. 
> 
>  
> 
> ___

Kakashi was pure sex. 

It wasn’t just the primal stimulation from the moon or seeing Kakashi move once again, so graceful and flowing… no, there was something else to it. While it was finally daytime, the storm had dwindled down to drizzle, leaving very little light in the living room. But it didn’t matter, because Kakashi soaked up anything the sky could provide, causing his white skin to shine. 

He looked positively dangerous while kneeling on the hardwood floor. The shirt had dried out but was still clinging to his skin; Iruka’s sweatpants hung loose on his hips. Kakashi’s hair had turned soft and silvery once again. His single dark eye was narrowed on Iruka as he assessed just what he wanted to do with the other man. It had less the sinister look from their second encounter on the hotel rooftop and more like the night of Kakashi’s confession when he said he wanted to take things slow and shame had flooded Iruka for pushing them too far, too fast. It wasn’t the expression from when they were standing awkwardly together, but from a few seconds later when Kakashi had tossed him onto the bed and his lean hand went down Iruka’s pants and the man admitted he liked that Iruka took what he wanted.

It was that look. 

It was a look of brutish desire.

This morning Iruka’s wolf brain calculated correctly: Kakashi was about to make a move on him. 

Suddenly his bathrobe was wide open, exposing his entire naked body, and his left leg was high in the air, his ankle being held aloft by a rather serene-appearing Kakashi Hatake.

Iruka heard himself made a peculiar, frantic sound, but there wasn’t any time to react any further. Apparently having decided his next course of action, Kakashi shoved down the broken recliner footrest and forced it closed with sheer supernatural force. At the very same time, he began to press ghostly kisses along the bottom of Iruka’s foot with impossible lightness. He was being so unbearably gentle, it immediately made Iruka warm all over, his revealed skin reddening under full view. He felt his whole body flush in arousal as Kakashi slid his other hand up Iruka’s leg to massage the moon-tense muscles of his thigh. Iruka realized he was making more sounds – they were like restrained whimpers – they made him blush all the more. He was mortified to be touched so tenderly. He could feel himself melting into the broken chair as his bewildered body responded to Kakashi’s touch as if he’d never been caressed so sweetly before.

… But had he? 

Had anyone really cared for him like this?

An unwanted image arose of Mizuki holding him face down on the bed, almost suffocating him against a pillow, while the werewolf clawed at Iruka’s bare waist and thrust into him, hard, without any more warning than first forcing him into position.

He must have stiffened at the memory, because Kakashi leaned forward, kissing the line of his calf muscle, and whispered into Iruka’s sensitive skin, low and sincere, “I want to spoil you.”

_Oh God._

Iruka hadn’t had the courage to look down at his cock, stiff and happy between them. There was an intoxicating tension filling his form demanding that he surrender to Kakashi’s sweet insistence. But instead of submission, he grew increasingly tense at the idea of the other man being soft and kind to him. His shoulders shook, he clenched his jaw, he stared wide-eyed.

But Kakashi remained unperturbed. His fingers drifted northward, running over the junction of Iruka’s naked thigh and pelvis. He lifted Iruka’s leg further up so he could once again kiss along Iruka’s foot. Wordlessly, he rolled his tongue, wet and loving, across Iruka’s heel. With perfect slowness, Kakashi licked from the back of Iruka’s leg all the way to his arousal – all while keeping the most intense eye contact Iruka had ever endured in his life.

It did very little to calm him down.

Iruka reached down and grabbed Kakashi’s shoulders to halt him from making any further progress. He blurted out in a rush, “You can’t – I really don’t deserve –”

“You deserve everything,” Kakashi countered, sudden and sharp. “I want to do this for you.”

He carefully placed Iruka’s leg down, only to pluck Iruka’s right hand from his shoulder, and slowly began to kiss each of his fingers. As Iruka collapsed backwards in the chair, feeling flabbergasted and uncertain what to say or do, his moon-aggravated body responded in delight on animalistic instinct. He could hear his breathing becoming irregular. His aroused flush worsened, his cock throbbed between his thighs. 

Kakashi did him no favors by deciding to lick the length of each of Iruka’s fingers – and then he brought three of them entirely into his mouth. The man was still terribly unrepentant as he stared at Iruka, watching his reaction with a dark and analytical single-eyed stare. Kakashi’s fangs skimmed over the back of Iruka’s fingers on both sides, scratching lightly over the flesh. 

It was desperately erotic, the visceral promise of violence and power and sex.

Iruka found he was harshly panting aloud, staring back at Kakashi, his mouth partly open. He had thought about this exactly, wondering if the vampire would ever lick anything beside his neck and throat. If Kakashi would – or could – lick his fingers – lick his –

He shuddered, his skin hot, his heart wild, as Kakashi slowly released his fingers and then bowed forward between Iruka’s legs. The vampire’s breath was almost human in its warmth: it wasn’t the insane heat from his blood binge, nor was it the cold frosty air that Iruka had grown accustomed to during their month together. In leisurely worship, Kakashi kissed along Iruka’s thigh and finally dropped his single-eyed gaze from Iruka’s flushed face. He made his way with unhurried love towards – towards – 

Kakashi’s tongue delicately touched the tip of Iruka’s cock like he was afraid he might cause Iruka pain.

Whining high in his throat, Iruka slumped down and gripped both armrests in aroused panic. He couldn’t tear his eyes off of Kakashi. The man seemed unworried by Iruka’s noisiness; in contrast, he smiled, small and pleased, at the reaction. Even though Iruka knew, _knew_ , Kakashi had no sexual experience beyond what they had shared, he was trembling in anticipation, in want, in desire. He hadn’t had anyone do _this_ in so, so long –

And Kakashi was fascinatingly unique in his approach. Seemingly quite cognizant of his fangs, the vampire didn’t down Iruka with delirious abandon. Instead, he chose to tease Iruka by licking at the head of his cock with long luscious licks, showing much of his pink tongue in the process. His skin was back to its pretty moon-white tone, his dark eye like the starless sky. Even his uncombed silver hair, feral and windswept, added to the man’s dangerous dark look of sex and satisfaction. 

In no time at all, Kakashi moved his right hand to Iruka’s shaft, using his own saliva as lubricant to stroke Iruka up and down with lazy but steady attention. He continued to lick at Iruka with incredible delicate precision. His other hand traced the battle scars that he so adored, the tapestry that crisscrossed Iruka’s exposed abdomen and chest. 

He was so slow and so attentive, it made Iruka shudder down to his very core.

No one - _no one_ \- had ever been so sweet to him. It was confusing and maddening. He wanted to move things quicker between them. He wanted to be brutal and aggressive: he thought about forcing Kakashi’s head down, making him take in everything, regardless of his fangs and whatever pain and injuries might happen. He wanted to shove Kakashi away, push those damn sweatpants down, open him up with tongue and fingers, and _then fuck him so hard Kakashi had tears in his eyes and couldn’t cry out properly._

But he knew that was his own horrid sexual history and his body’s new crazy reaction to the full moon demanding that he do all that to his – to his lover… his mate… his… his fiancé. 

Iruka could hear his breathing turn into gasps. He didn’t want to shut his eyes at the sensation of Kakashi’s loving tongue and lips memorizing the length of his arousal. But he couldn’t stop himself; he was becoming overwhelmed with it all. Suddenly, he found he was the one with tears in his eyes, and he swallowed in disbelief that someone could be so careful with him.

And that someone was a vampire! The worst enemy of werewolves! He could kill Iruka, he could do whatever he wanted in the world, he could be with anyone –

_Oh God, he loves me. He absolutely loves me._

Iruka’s eyes snapped open to see Kakashi pause over Iruka’s cock, his tongue dipped over his lower lip, his single black eye intent and interested on Iruka’s wet arousal. For a second, they looked at each other, silent but for Iruka’s unsteady breathing. But then, Iruka forced himself not to fall into dumb instincts, into fear, but instead he chose to seize forward and be who he wanted to be, to take what he wanted. 

He shakily ran his fingers over Kakashi’s scarred left cheek. In a controlled voice, Iruka confessed it all at once as he kept eye contact between them, “I don’t need you to do this or anything else. I love you just the way you are. I only want us to do what you want to do.”

The other man smiled at him, distant and amused. He closed his lips near Iruka’s cock and tilted his head just slightly into Iruka’s open hand. 

“Well,” Kakashi said slowly, his own voice sultry, with his dark eye fixed on Iruka’s blush. “I think I’d like you to come on my face.”

Iruka immediately embarrassed himself by making a squeaking sound utterly unbecoming a werewolf, let alone an adult human man. In between them, he saw his saliva-soaked cock twitch in excitement. Then, as if to humiliate him even further, his body did a full uncontrolled shudder of pleasure at Kakashi’s obscene suggestion.

Even though he had seen Kakashi smile on occasion, Iruka had never seen the malicious amusement that now spread across Kakashi’s too-pale features. 

“Will you, Iruka?” the vampire purred, staring at him, shameless and sinful. 

He sounded as if danger and sex had merged into a single man.

Unable to stop himself, even though he was flushed red hot, Iruka pulled on Kakashi’s other shoulder to move him forward. Kakashi’s wicked look went wild for a moment as the other man recognized Iruka’s acceptance. Then, with invigorated energy, he returned to licking and stroking Iruka’s suddenly painfully hard cock. He stopped touching Iruka’s scars so he could hold Iruka’s waist with familiar enhanced strength, keeping him firmly in place. He was somehow still gentle, not gripping hard enough to bruise… not that Iruka would have minded. 

Admittedly, he appreciated the solidity and stability Kakashi’s hand offered him. He was collapsed in the broken recliner, now desperate to keep his eyes open to see – 

He almost choked when his orgasm suddenly swept over him.

It was a perversely beautiful sight to see his cum splash across Kakashi’s lips and his pale unscarred cheek. The vampire was impeccably dignified through it all, barely fluttering his dark eye and keeping his mouth open, catching some and doing the unfairly sexual thing of swallowing. His wide satisfied smile and lusty half-lidded eye were truly lecherous. He continued to fondle Iruka’s fading arousal while watching him ease down from his orgasm. Kakashi appeared ever so pleased with what he had produced and experienced, to the point that he didn’t move whatsoever to wipe his face clean of Iruka’s wet white cum.

But enough – that was enough!

Iruka launched himself at Kakashi, totally surprising the other man. He was merciless as he pushed the vampire down, shoved the sweatpants out of the way, and found just what he wanted between Kakashi’s thighs. The vampire was truly aroused, his cock thick and heavy, especially since he hadn’t done anything to resolve it. Iruka stayed between his legs for a long time: he didn’t follow Kakashi’s method of licking lightly and stroking firmly but instead went fully after the other man, determinedly deepthroating Kakashi until he started to gag. But, fortunately, the moon was still overstimulating him, and his throat loosened on instinct, and then he could take all of Kakashi in, which was a lot, a whole lot, but it was good, so very good. Soon after, he forced Kakashi to fuck his mouth: he violently relished the feel of the man’s hardness pushing past his lips and across his tongue and into his throat. 

But he startled badly when Kakashi suddenly grabbed the neck of the bathrobe and yanked him upwards. Even though Iruka imagined his expression was one of surprise and concern, seeing Kakashi’s own scarred features was instantly reassuring. It was clear the vampire wanted a kiss, so he kissed him so deeply that the other man became wanton and restless underneath him. 

Through it all, he continued to stroke Kakashi, deliciously pleased by how wet he was from precum and Iruka’s saliva. When Kakashi began to moan more, unable to keep up with their kissing, Iruka moved to the side of his neck, remembering with excited pride the sound that Kakashi made when Iruka first bit him there. He did it again – biting down on the long, lovely slope of Kakashi’s throat – and he was rewarded so very perfectly with Kakashi soundlessly coming hard into his hand and across his bare scarred abdomen. 

He stayed above Kakashi so he could best witness the other man fall from the height of his orgasm. 

It was so good to see him like that again. He’d missed the sight of those pink-flushed cheeks. 

He’d missed Kakashi lusting after him, loving him.

Iruka kissed him lightly on the lips and then laid beside him, working to catch his breath. They remained like that for a while as little lethargic thoughts floated through Iruka’s moon-rattled, post-ecstatic mind. He considered the strange reality that he’d gotten a blowjob from a vampire – and that he needed to clean the entirety of the living room after this particular sexual escapade – and that he really should ask Kakashi to take a shower with him. 

He’d recently learned that Kakashi actually did take showers in places beyond his studio apartment: the sight of the ridiculously beautiful man during his blood binge walking through the living room in Iruka’s smallest towel past Naruto and Sasuke, both staring open-mouthed, was now forever seared into Iruka’s memory. 

He bit at his bottom lip, enjoying the taste of Kakashi in his mouth.

Then, suddenly, a real concern occurred to him, and Iruka shifted to his side, looking at Kakashi as the other man loosely surveyed the plaster ceiling.

“Hey,” Iruka started out a bit nervously but then pushed ahead bravely. “You said no one had ever bitten you when we were under the bridge. How’s that possible? I thought vampires…”

He ended up trailing off, feeling absurdly embarrassed at how little he knew about vampires and Kakashi and the entire supernatural world that he existed in. 

But Kakashi was even-tempered and peaceful as he glanced over at him. He had pulled up Iruka’s sweatpants over his hips, but he still looked wonderfully disheveled after their recent time together. 

“Oh, I wasn’t bit by another vampire,” Kakashi replied without the least bit of stress. His expression and half-lidden eye were both perfectly calm as he explained, “I was struck by lightning while I was being executed.”

Iruka immediately sat up and stared down at him. He couldn’t even get the words out, he was so thoroughly thrown and disturbed and confused by what Kakashi had just admitted.

Instead, he found himself blinking, his mouth falling open, his skin going cold and pale. 

In contrast, Kakashi didn’t move at all. His single-eyed gaze stayed serene. Still looking at Iruka, he continued effortlessly: “I dug out of my grave a week later during a solar eclipse.” He paused in relaxed contemplation and then added, “No one knows what happened. But I _am_ undead – and I seem to be a vampire.”

It was strange how quickly Iruka’s world went awry again. 

A month ago, it had happened with _the scent_ \- Kakashi’s scent - how it made him hunt and invade and attack and kiss and lick and want.

And now, as he fixated on the unbreathing, unconcerned face of the very same man, Iruka found himself murmuring, lost and disbelieving, “You’re different, aren’t you? … You’re unique.”

Kakashi sat up slightly, turning on his side. He only gave a small, slight smile. 

His scarred face, still so achingly pretty, had turned Iruka’s world upside-down, just as much as finding Naruto, maybe even more so. 

When the man – the vampire? – didn’t respond to him, Iruka forced out a nervous whisper, his breathing becoming uneven and his heart growing worried: “Are you… really important?”

Kakashi propped up his head, his fingers going deep into his silver hair. He ran his single-eyed gaze across Iruka’s distressed features. He struck a lovely figure on their living room floor, but he was pure sex, pure danger, pure power, pure mystery…

It was suddenly unnerving again. _It was alarming._

Tension roughly poured through Iruka. His instincts tore up his soul, acutely reminding him:

_The scarred white wolf was the most powerful thing I’ve ever met… until the demon Itachi… until the demon Uchiha on the roof… and… Kakashi defeated all of them with ease. He… he is somebody. He’s something much bigger than me, more powerful, more significant –_

But then Kakashi asked him quietly, “Am I important to you, Iruka?”

Instantly, Iruka answered, unthinking, but meaning every word:

“Yes, of course! I love you.”

A heavy blush followed in his words’ wake. He was surprised by his own honesty. He’d spoken immediately and truthfully; he found himself staring at Kakashi with wide, startled eyes.

After a moment of gazing back at him, Kakashi stated softly, “Then I’m important.”


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You know what I think we need?
> 
> Another Guest Perspective!
> 
> And you'll never guess who...
> 
>  
> 
> ______

The werewolf was on fire. 

Even in the rain… the wolf was aflame. He was dazzling atop the distant building. Youkai chakra glittered through his fur as if he had been sprayed with luminescent human blood.

He was defending Kakashi Hatake against one of the most powerful beings in existence.

Yet… the werewolf was saturated with destiny’s excess. He stood a small chance.

The sudden howl wasn’t so surprising, but the subsequent lightning made Itachi raise his eyebrows. He hadn’t seen that in a long, long time. 

So things _had_ changed: Kakashi really _did_ care for the wolf. 

The undead nin was artificially relaxed as always. He stared down his old friend flawlessly. He was deadly without a word or movement. But then the wolf, glistening bright red, made a sound and shifted the whole atmosphere with his whimper. 

After three hundred years, Kakashi was no longer ghostly white. Now he was curiously pink. His spectral spiritual energy had integrated with that of the Nine-Tailed Fox into pastel watercolor.

Upon hearing the wolf’s whine, his sunrise-hued chakra lurched forward like a duelist in a bout, even though he did not physically shift. It was a clear warning, it was a demand for departure.

Obito winced in his true state. His shadow went back all at once. But then he kept moving, withdrawing from the rooftop – 

\- and reappeared in front of Itachi across the city. 

Itachi did not flinch: he had become an expert at confronting Obito without emotion. He remained standing as he watched the other demon lean forward on the ledge of the building. While his shadow shape had stayed black since his mutilation inside the Spanish church, Obito had been made foul by advanced magic. His form curled sickly at the edges; he was outlined in a maggot-white tone. His right eye was a variant of Itachi’s own. This time, their vengeful constellations were trained on Itachi, their motion slow, sluggish, and without challenge.

It was Obito’s new left eye that concerned Itachi. He knew that eye. It was the highest heresy amongst Hell’s inhabitants. It went against their religious hierarchy. It was the worst perversion of the Enlightenment. 

Just one week ago, Obito had willingly sought it, stolen it, and shoved it into his eye socket. 

With that act of thievery, his cousin was done using pseudonyms and pilfered identities. He was no longer Tobi or Madara. His cult had been destroyed from the inside; its rotten core crept outwards, killing those on the farthest rim. In his lonesome survival, he had loosened his form to show its necrotic white silhouette, reclaiming his real self. He was Obito Uchiha again.

He rocked back and forth on the ledge, watching Itachi with truly evil eyes. 

It was apparent he was angry.

When he spoke, Obito sounded snide. His tone was acidic, sinking past Itachi’s illusion.

“Are you on their side – or mine?”

They both already knew the answer. It was simple courtesy to ask. After all, Itachi had his longsword resting against his leg; he knew Obito would find him after his fight with Kakashi. Even though the other demon showed no such weapon, he radiated killing intent as he stood precariously on the ledge. His white-lined shadow flickered out like kneading cat claws.

After a moment’s pause, Itachi stepped backwards and lifted his sword into the air. 

Obito’s false face contorted at the gesture.

And then they fought like sword-wielding wildcats.

They instantly struck blades several times on the rooftop at speeds unseen by the mortals below them. Obito’s shadow-produced sword was smaller and had a serrated edge: it skewered the surface of Itachi’s human form, leaving gruesome divots of torn flesh. He was faster since he’d implanted the heretical eye, and so Itachi swiftly found himself on the defensive, struggling to save his own wretched existence. 

He refused to let fear fill him - _do not think of Sasuke, do not think of Sasuke_ \- but he saw his brother’s black eyes become scarlet-red and sparkling, he saw the slight smile on Sasuke’s face when they sat around the campfire and golden fireflies flocked to them, he saw the irritated and intrigued look Sasuke wore when he explained he had met a boy at school and the boy was a youkai, a very strong and very stupid youkai, and Itachi had known, then, that it was his brother’s destiny, this was the prophecy, and –

He forced open his shadow and flung himself through it. He could feel Obito following him, but he travelled to territory familiar only to him - fifty feet from the center of Antarctica in a white winter wasteland. 

Itachi spun on his disturbed cousin, holding his sword in front of him. The snow swum about him, the ice crunched under his unreal feet. He would not fear Obito, he would not fear death. He would survive this, he had survived worse.

Their blades crossed again, and again, and again. The illusionary sounds of sharp metal striking metal disappeared into the whipping winds of the tundra. Even with Obito in front of him, furious-faced and crazed, Itachi could only see Sasuke hanging limp in his cousin’s grip in the same position as the red-chakra-soaked wolf. He suddenly understood Kakashi’s abrupt appearance; he understood the violent threat towards his old friend. 

Itachi remained on the defensive. Even though he had left Sasuke alone for years at a time, he wouldn’t abandon him now that Obito was moving to enact his final plans. Itachi could see his own longsword cutting into humans on every continent across the planet. He could see the weapon sliding, slick and bloody, out of celestials and youkai and corporeal legends. He had killed so many serving Obito these last twelve years – but that was over now.

So now Obito wanted him dead, too.

His cousin was always awful with his emotions. He revealed them like bleeding open wounds.

In the biting icy wind, Obito was all bared teeth, entrenched brow, and tense form. He moved without seemingly any effort, turning into shadow when Itachi came close, rarely letting his human form take a single hit. He was infuriated by Itachi’s betrayal without admitting as much. It didn’t need to be said: he hadn’t realized Itachi’s secret plans until these past few days, and the knowledge had made him act rash with rage, sent him stumbling towards his old partner in crime.

When Obito’s blade nearly decapitated him, Itachi knew he had to end the match.

All he could think of was Sasuke.

Except – there was someone else now – a slight strange shimmer of someone else –

Forcing his eyes to turn as wild and wrong as they could, Itachi caught Obito for just a second. The spell was his own creation: he hadn’t shown it to his cousin in case of this exact situation. Only a miniscule moment of stillness swarmed over Obito. He looked frozen in place. It was as if his disfigured black-white demon form had turned into the ice that surrounded them both. Even his furious expression – with a hint of hurt, further darkened by arrogance – had been put on impermanent pause.

Itachi slipped down into his own shadow. He suddenly coughed as he did so, the sensation still unexpected and painful. As he fled the ice shelf, he saw the bright red blood splatter he was leaving behind by his cousin’s white-tinged black feet. 

He reemerged in the studio apartment, working his hands through complicated spell, unwilling and unable to look up at his new surroundings. The black magic grew and grew in his pale human hands until he smashed his open hand on the wall by the messily-made bed. Streaks of shadow fled outwards, reaching every corner of the room, darting into the bathroom and clutching onto the kitchen and entrapping the outside balcony. 

Itachi coughed up more blood, this time into his dark suit sleeve. He hadn’t paid attention to his appearance, but he found it was the same as usual. It was his business suit, the one from fifty years ago, only more tailored to fit the fashion of the times. He blearily looked down at his thin maroon-colored tie and the red human blood dripping around it on his white shirt.

The studio wasn’t silent. Of course it wasn’t. 

Instead, the slow melancholic piano of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata swept through the apartment. The digital recording had captured some of the reality of a human performance: the labored breathing of the pianist made the piece feel present. 

The softly-created notes, following the rise and fall of a single crushing night, made Itachi feel worse than he had in the sorrowed tundra fighting in his cousin.

He looked up at Maito Gai.

The immortal was standing perfectly still as he stared at Itachi from the kitchen. The man’s curse was still moving at its same unstressed pace, the dark grey chains slowly rotating across his tan flesh. He was more aflame than the wolf. His body burned a vivid springtime green, rushing off him in endless waves. His eyes were wide and all-white, as if lit with the same fire.

“Not a word,” Itachi said – and then he coughed up human blood once again, covering the entirety of his white shirt and painting the wallpaper red.

He added evenly, “Don’t move.”

He stood there for a long while, sporadically coughing, wiping at his illusory mouth. He felt out through his spell for Obito, but his cousin hadn’t tried to follow him. Somewhere in the world the other demon would be losing his last shreds of sanity, but Itachi wouldn’t be there to witness the furious descent of a once-decent creature. 

Instead, he was in Kakashi Hatake’s abandoned apartment, leaning against a wall and staring emptily at Gai’s freshly cooked curry. It was a British-Japanese curry: Itachi had seen it made in the early nineteenth century. Seemingly Maito Gai enjoyed making it. Only moments before Itachi’s unannounced arrival, the immortal must have been plating his late-night dinner. Across the room, Itachi could spot the chicken, carrots, and potatoes resting in a rich orange-brown curry sauce. A pile of white rice and a cut soft-boiled egg joined the curried meat and vegetables. 

Of course Maito Gai was a good cook.

The immortal looked like he was about to die, though.

Still, he was a master of self-restraint, that Maito Gai.

“Do you remember what I told you at Chernobyl?” Itachi asked, his false throat feeling impossibly raw, making his human voice raspy.

Ever the devout listener, Gai tried to obey both commands – don’t speak, don’t move – and so Itachi waved a hand dismissively in the air, as if he was countering a wizard’s spell. 

“Of course!” the immortal instantly replied, lively beyond any logical understanding. But he also sounded like he was breaking. He obviously wanted to step forward and comfort Itachi, but that wouldn’t do. It couldn’t happen. There were things to be said. Things such as –

“The prophecy’s being fulfilled. It’s them. It’s Sasuke and the Nine-Tailed Fox.”

Itachi couldn’t look away from Maito Gai. He had to face facts, they both did. He had done much the same in Chernobyl twelve years earlier, when he tracked the immortal man into the remnants of human civilization and found him tending to turtle eggs by a rusting Ferris wheel. 

After several years of separation, Gai had been thrilled to see him. He’d flown forward, they had fought, and Itachi had lost, so very confused yet again by the immortal’s insistence to hold him. After forcing his way out of the embrace, Itachi had put a firm hand on Gai’s mighty, massive chest. He ignored the way his shadow hummed in excitement at the feel of thick muscle and a rapid human heartbeat. Instead, he kept Gai at bay and explained to him in clear terms that –

_There is a prophecy. Three will be born and unite to defend the world. They will herald from Heaven, Hell, and Earth. They will have a trainer and a teacher madly in love._

Gai had looked down at him with enormous black eyes and asked if this was about Kakashi and his two friends from three centuries earlier. 

But, no… Itachi could see Obito, how he was now. He wasn’t of Hell anymore. And Rin… she was dead, returned to nonexistence, welcomed back into God’s enveloping embrace. 

And the trio’s trainer and teacher – the wizard and witch madly in love – they had died together sealing the Nine-Tailed Fox, the Demon Fox, into their day-old infant son. 

The day of the sealing, a blue light had shone in the secret dark space that Itachi kept his brother safe since his massacre of their clan. He had felt stirrings of that when the Fox first broke free of its host and began to destroy the city. But it was when Itachi watched them – Kakashi’s old sensei and the sensei’s wife – dissolve into ash... that’s when the blue crackled like lightning up through Itachi’s own shadow, signaling Sasuke was finally waking up after several hundred years. 

High above the young demon, two mortal souls were used up like wood kindling, serving as the strongest magic possible to seal the Fox into the body of a human baby. 

Twelve years later, Itachi leaned more heavily on the wall of Kakashi’s abandoned apartment. He flicked away his black suit jacket, letting it take some of the mortal blood with its disappearance. He tasted iron and humanity on his unreal tongue. He thought of Sasuke sleeping beside the Nine-Tailed Fox, his black shadow glittering all over with red diamonds of wild chakra. How fast things moved in prophecy, when destiny had its hands around the throats of its pawns, strangling them into submission and licking open old wounds without remorse.

So Itachi made it more real by declaring shortly while still staring at Maito Gai:

“They met the angel at school today. It was love at first sight. They are the three.”

He went into the bathroom, ignoring how unstable his human form felt. Even though he’d been feeling strange the last fifty years, the fight with Obito had exacerbated his sickness. It wasn’t the cold wind that he swallowed, nor the rushing through shadows… It was the pain behind his cousin’s eyes – the red one so like his own – and the profane purple one that had damned him, destined him to something crueler than unlife or nonexistence.

Itachi spat human saliva tinged red into the sink. He gripped the sides, bowing his head down. His black hair kept bothering his face: another reminder of how unsuccessful he had been fifty years prior breaking Tsunade’s mortality spell. He felt weak, like a physical being might. 

He wanted to sleep… like a mortal thing would. 

Curl up in bed, pull warm sheets close, become cozy with –

Gai’s huge arms were gentle as they wrapped around his waist. Itachi didn’t startle, although he hadn’t seriously considered that the immortal would break his promise not to move. He forced down the tension from his shadow form, urging it to stay serene in the face of –

Surrendering just a little, Itachi moved his head aside to allow Gai to lean down and nuzzle his neck. He’d already loosened his tie, revealing much of his throat. Gai’s nose was warm and calming on his cool skin. His shadow shape reacted instinctively, fluttering about them in its raven murder, the thousand black wings taking over much of the bathroom. But, as always, Gai couldn’t see that part of him. No, Maito Gai was entranced with this version of him, the one with pale human skin and empty, exhausted facial features. 

Yes… Gai loved him.

The epiphany had made Itachi sick fifty years ago, just as sick as Tsunade’s spell.

For a century and a half, he’d watched Gai behave unlike any other human in existence. He had felt very little towards the man in terms of definite emotion, except perhaps a begrudging respect for anyone who could keep up with an Uchiha and also tolerate, accept, and welcome an unusual creature like Kakashi Hatake.

But, in his death throes, bleeding out his eyes, Gai had been good to him.

_Actual, genuine good. Like the good from before – when he had been -_

He relaxed in Gai’s arms, leaned against the immortal’s chest, and closed his eyes.

_Before he fell from Heaven… so long ago. When he, too, was good once…_

Just like that, Maito Gai was whispering in his ear, or what the man must think was whispering. All other creatures would have called it speaking, but Itachi knew Gai was trying to be quiet, keep his voice down, make it soft and soothing. He slipped his arm over Gai’s, bringing their hands together, making their fingers entwine together like needlework. Just like before, when this had started between them, the immortal was speaking to him in all sorts of languages, ones long dead, others brand new. 

Then – so delicate and yet so steel-like - Gai spoke to him in the language of angels:

“You are strong, Itachi. You are beautiful. I believe in you. I will always believe in you.”

… it was Chernobyl all over again.

No, worse… 

… no, better…

Because Gai complemented his reassurance in the same sweet language, so miserably familiar:

“Your sacrifice saved your brother. You have helped save the world.” 

Itachi opened his eyes: he could see their combined figures in the mirror. He was pale-skinned, dark-clothed, and small; he was overwhelmed by the massive being behind him, clad only in a white shirt and black track shorts. The most vivid, compelling things about him were the red blood staining his shirt and his black-magical eyes gazing at Gai in the mirror. He didn’t enthrall the man nor did he pursue Gai’s past. He simply watched as the green-aflame immortal kissed his throat with unbearable, unashamed kindness. The chains of Gai’s curse continued to move ceaselessly over his skin.

Around them and through them and behind them both, his shadow form was turning feral. It looked like a dark beast unleashed on the world. It could not be contained, its collection of silently crying ravens in utter absolute chaos. It was in wild panic, it was in confused wonder, it was in aggravated anticipation.

He turned around so swiftly that Gai only just saw the movement. 

As he forced Gai’s face close to his, Itachi saw himself in miniature in those hope-blown black eyes. He was blood-drenched and more mortal than he’d ever imagined he could be. His own red eyes with their sparkling pitch-black supernovas looked desperate… so… very… desperate.

Itachi might have felt humiliated – or meager – or mad –

If not for the way that Gai kissed him.

He never knew he wanted to be kissed so gently until he met Maito Gai. 

Now he knew he _needed_ to be kissed this gently.

All those screaming humans - those youkai fighting tooth and nail, their chakra burning the atmosphere - those angels’ bleeding, broken wings heavy in his shadow-claw hands – all the creatures he had killed to stay with Obito, reside within his cult, keep him close, make sure he didn’t recognize that Sasuke was one of the three – 

As Gai suddenly brought him up off the ground, making Itachi wrap his legs around the immortal’s waist, feeling his back press soft so soft too soft against the bathroom wall – it was like -

On the radiation-soaked ground at Chernobyl, under the looming shadow of the unused Ferris wheel from before humanity’s insane genius went nuclear and spilled out death onto its people – 

They had done this before… only once.

All because –

Itachi had said –

“I might die doing this. If I do, take care of Sasuke.”

At the very words, Gai had wept, and it had broken the place inside Itachi that humans called their heart. He ran his fingers through the translucent wet, again so surprised that this strange outlandish man loved him, but this was proof once more. There was always such proof, and it was always so surprising.

Then, to his shock, Gai suddenly had him down on his back, sprawled underneath him on irradiated earth, and Itachi had stared up at him in unconcealed astonishment.

“Marry me,” Gai said at Chernobyl. 

They were the same words he used four decades earlier in New York City.

Just like before, Itachi had looked away from him, silent, without answer.

But – unlike New York City - Gai broke his own code at Chernobyl like it was but a twig in his mighty grip. He grew more passionate as Itachi let himself loose; he left marks, dark lingering marks, ones that lasted far longer than Itachi could have ever imagined. He was gentle only in those first few seconds, opening up the illusion that Itachi had conjured, but he soon recognized it was a false body, and Itachi controlled it, and they became one, over and over again, in the bleak nuclear wasteland.

All because Gai thought he had only one chance with his ninth person.

Yet Itachi had survived, after all. He’d never expected to see Kakashi Hatake near Sasuke twelve years later in a snowy schoolyard – nor had he predicted the appearance of an ephemeral werewolf in an age-old prophecy. But, as Kakashi’s drunken brutal grip on Itachi’s throat showed, with his spiritual energy already a blushing maidenly pink… he was madly in love.

So he was the trainer.

And the wolf – he was the teacher.

Itachi had survived to see the prophecy being fulfilled. He’d guided Sasuke enough that the boy wasn’t overwhelmed with hatred; he had killed those who would kill his only surviving kin. He had done unspeakable evil while serving Obito, but it had staved off even worse horrors and allowed friendship to occur and entangle and breathe between the destined three.

It was a sacrifice only he could make.

This time between him and Gai was better than Chernobyl. He was more of a mortal now, even though it was only a little over a decade later. The pleasure pouring through him was achingly visceral and real. His once-breathy confessions into Gai’s neck, hair, ear – those were all the more breathless and shaking and dangerously true. 

He couldn’t recall when Gai had forced down their clothes, when he had first entered him. 

But it was happening again – they were, yet again – 

_God, they were making love. He – he, a fallen angel – he was making love._

He should have been dead a dozen times over. He should be tortured on the rack in Hell. He should have been blasted to nothingness on his descent to Earth. He should have decomposed as a pathetic human mortal, his wings torn from him as consequence of his absurd blasphemy. 

But – no – he was – he was here – he was with -

Gai kissed him so very gently that Itachi had not a single coherent thought in his head as he admitted in the softest tone he’d ever used in his existence:

“I missed you.”


	16. Chapter 16

Weeks flew by.

Since the start of his unlife, time had been relative to Kakashi. Days meant nothing. Months were barely noticed. Years attracted a bit of his attention. Decades seemed more important. Centuries, now that – that was a way to track the passage of time.

But time had become strange ever since he met Iruka. As always, he was unable to measure drunken hours and sleep, but, beyond that, Kakashi had never been so fixated on time. 

Now he counted seconds. He stared at clocks. He contemplated sunrises, he found himself moody around sunset. He recognized midnight - it was Iruka’s favorite hour - they were most often intimate around that time.

Ever since Obito stood on their rooftop, time controlled his unlife. 

Determined not to repeat the encounter, Kakashi followed Iruka everywhere on never-ending high alert. He asked very little about what happened; he had seen the damage himself. Although it was centuries later, Minato and Kushina’s teachings stayed with him: Kakashi had no trouble locating Iruka’s spinal damage, his brain damage, both done to him in milliseconds by a demon Kakashi once called a friend. The looping long-lasting healing spell took its leisurely time to work – it was nothing like Naruto’s quick-acting speed chakra. Fortunately, Iruka barely seemed to notice Kakashi had done something to him that night during the storm; the werewolf continued to be incredibly tolerant by not asking about it. 

Every day, after they kissed good night and Iruka fell asleep, Kakashi checked on the spell. It was still in slow churning activation, triggering tissue repair, replacing neural pathways. Its continued activity made Kakashi increasingly tattered. He felt like a tapestry being pulled apart thread by thread. 

He would never forgive Obito for hurting Iruka.

Never.

_He hadn’t even known the demon was still alive._

And yet – and yet – 

For Obito to do _this_ to Iruka?

Thus… there was no desperate search for his friend… his former friend.

Instead Kakashi played perpetual bodyguard to Iruka, falling back into his old routine from before he went cold and drank up men. Every morning, he read the news, watched his fiancé make breakfast and lunch, waved goodbye to Naruto, followed Iruka about the apartment as he got ready for work, escorted him to the hotel, waited across the street and looked for threats, picked up Iruka and brought him home. Since his sleep, Kakashi had started showing Naruto (and Iruka, who observed from the side, curious but petrified) how to make simple dinner meals. They had been working on miso ramen for a while now. Even though Iruka usually seized up in the final stages, Naruto remained dogged in his attempts to combine shiitake mushrooms, bean sprouts, scallions, carrots, and sliced pork with thin noodles and broth. 

Two Sundays after Obito’s attack, Naruto made the meal perfectly.

And finally Iruka did what Kakashi had wanted him to do for a while: the werewolf blissfully walked Naruto to school the next morning, so very proud of his adopted son he just couldn’t let him go in the stairwell.

There had been something odd going on with Naruto for the last two weeks, but Kakashi would not abandon Iruka to investigate what it was. The _something_ was undoubtedly occurring at school, and so Kakashi was on the defensive as he strolled behind the pair with his gloved hands in his coat pockets. He kept Obito’s demon eye open during the whole walk. There was an off-chance some legendary creature was messing with the kid, aware he was the oblivious vessel to the Nine-Tailed Fox, purposefully stirring up Naruto’s chakra to force an unsealing. 

If that was the case, Kakashi would have kill the pest.

Certainly Naruto had been behaving differently in the apartment the past twenty days: the Fox was more active and much happier, enjoying long embraces with Iruka’s spiritual wolf form and even curling his blazing orange tail around Kakashi when he sat in the broken recliner. The boy himself was on his phone so much that Iruka nearly grounded him when Naruto kept using it in bed past night’s out. Even though Naruto seemed to always be grinning before, he was practically bouncing the last two weeks, constantly stretching out his ruddy cheeks.

Sasuke was waiting for Naruto at the front entrance of the school. Unsurprisingly, Itachi was nowhere to be found, his absence again a constant reminder of how he’d abandoned his brother for centuries. With Obito’s eye exposed, Kakashi could see the pleased little purr of Sasuke’s black shadow as the young demon watched Naruto walking towards the school. Blood-red eyes widened in interest upon observing Iruka beside his friend; the kid noticed the change in Naruto’s daily pattern as well as the fatherly influence on his life. A quick glance further back had the two of them meeting demon eyes. While Kakashi kept his countenance under control, reacting not at all, Sasuke stiffened in his shadow form, displeased at Kakashi’s appearance. 

_I wonder what terrible things your brother told you about me?_

Yet, before Kakashi could think anything else, something truly strange happened.

A bright red chakra thread sprang into existence between Naruto and Sasuke…

… and then another one emerged, leading to –

_Oh. An angel._

Kakashi completely stopped walking on the sidewalk he was so surprised. Of course, on instinct, none of it showed on his face, his body as loose and lazy as always. 

Yet the space where his soul once was suddenly filled up with puffy white clouds of ache and hurt.

The red thread moved in a continually shifting triangle, connecting Naruto, Sasuke, and… an angel.

She had changed her hair to a cherry blossom pink; she showed impressive humanoid muscles in a sleeveless red shirt and blue denim shorts. She was coming from the opposite side of the street… The three of them were acting as if they met regularly in this spot every morning. She seemed less energetic than Naruto but infinitely more passionate than Sasuke, at least what he showed in his illusory state.

Yet – Kakashi was just so unable to move because –

The girl’s miniature white wings spread open wide when she saw the two boys. They were delicate and refined, absolutely suited to her form. Just like Rin’s, the girl’s angelic wings acted like small bird wings, flapping several times in a row as if wanting to fly. She instinctively closed them, tucking them against herself, as she picked up her walking pace. She waved enthusiastically at both boys while she rushed forward and pressed her hands to her mouth, calling out loudly, “Sasuke! Naruto! Good morning!”

The thread between the three _glowed._

Swiftly looking back at Sasuke, Kakashi could only stare. 

The demon’s shadow form was reacting as wildly as Itachi’s had in the street after he and Gai kissed – when Gai had shouted after the elite assassin, saying that it was fine to admit vulnerability – and here was Sasuke, so much younger, so very sheltered, his black cat body unabashedly enthused, his entire form tilting forward, eagerly seeking both the angel and Naruto at the same time.

Kakashi dared turn his attention back to Naruto – and –

Obito’s eye went totally blind by the brightness.

He definitely should not have looked directly at the Nine-Tailed Fox, but he really hadn’t known better until the mistake had been made. The lesson was further learned as deep dagger-sharp pain scraped along the inside of Kakashi’s skull. It started in his left socket where he’d long ago pushed Obito’s eye into his undead face. Not wanting to be noticed during the morning ritual, Kakashi restrained himself from slapping a hand over the demon flesh, but the pain was ceaseless and scratching across bone, so he closed the eyelid, trying to shut off agony.

He suddenly saw that Iruka was nearly in tears as he said goodbye to Naruto.

Kakashi caught the tail end of the werewolf’s speech - “I know you’re growing up, but I’ll always love you, no matter what. Always, Naruto” – and Iruka, totally ignorant of the burning-red chakra thread and the resulting brilliant blinding energy overtaking the street and perhaps the entire city, leaned down and kissed a squirming, resistant Naruto on the forehead.

Just behind them, Sasuke smirked at the show of affection. In contrast, the angel came to stand beside him and smiled warmly at the sight. She was obviously pleased Naruto had a father who loved him.

Then she looked behind the pair - and saw Kakashi for the first time.

He could feel his undead body melt straight through his shoes. Broken nerves trying to root into Hell and snag something dark and devilish down there. His eye widened in shock; he froze up. He couldn’t breathe, not that he needed to, not that he ever did since his death.

But the angel only waved as excitedly as she had to Sasuke and Naruto, this time to him. She called out, loud and clear as a church bell, “Kakashi-sensei! Good morning to you, too!”

The rest of the morning was a blur as time washed cruelly by him. 

The next thing that Kakashi truly registered was holding onto Iruka’s shoulders outside the downtown hotel. While he didn’t particularly remember any of it, he realized he must have habitually followed the werewolf through their own morning ritual, including watching him shower and accompanying him to work. He was now staring down at Iruka with sudden concern, which was in turn causing the man to look greatly disturbed back up at him.

“What sort of wedding do you want?” Kakashi heard himself ask. There were so many thoughts in his head he could only force out that one, that single worry. The pulsating red thread… he knew it and what it meant. He kept seeing it glowing between the three kids, the fine line burning like condensed, controlled fire. 

Even now, with Iruka fully overtaking in his single-eyed vision, Kakashi could still see the red thread of fate between the children.

Completely unaware of the horror out in the world, Iruka blinked several times in response, appearing innocently perplexed by the question. “I-I don’t know,” he finally admitted. “I don’t have any family.” The werewolf winced a little but tried to smile through his pain. “Or friends, really. It’s just been me and Naruto for a while now.” He looked infinitely more depressed than he had been a moment ago, making Kakashi deeply regret his interrogation.

So he brought Iruka into an embrace, one that rivaled with Gai’s intensity.

Stuffed against his wool coat, the werewolf seemed to sniffle a little. He wrapped his arms around Kakashi and buried his face into the rough fabric. 

“Now you have me,” Kakashi found himself saying quietly, and Iruka held him tighter, seemingly unable to respond otherwise. After they separated a few moments later, Kakashi leaned down and kissed Iruka’s scarred cheek. It was the last significant step in their daily morning ritual. 

Kakashi both recognized and ignored the watery wave in the werewolf’s dark brown eyes as he stepped away and gave a simple wave with single raised gloved hand. Like he did every day, Iruka adjusted his uniform and headed inside the rotating hotel doors, disappearing out of the sight of ordinary eyes. But Kakashi employed Obito’s: he followed the other man through the building by tracking his Fox-chakra-flooded wolf body. As usual, Iruka walked to the back office and the employee-only area, interacted with non-threatening humans, and then took a servant’s elevator to the highest level of private suites where he began to work in earnest.

As usual, Kakashi took his spot at the café across from the hotel. He settled into the old wicker chair, ordered a cappuccino from a human waitress in a black apron, and then stared at his phone unthinkingly. He didn’t run through social media feeds, through news sites. 

His brain was terrifically busy.

Kushina had once told him about the red thread of fate. She had explained in gushing exuberant poetry the _feeling_ of the thread between her and Minato the moment they had fallen in love. After monstrous witch-hunters wanting her magic had kidnapped her, a blonde boy she’d disregarded from her academy had come to rescue her. In their giddy rush back to the castle, Kushina had _felt it_ ; she had felt the thread of fate spring up connecting them. 

Minato was showing Obito and Rin how to best channel their profane and divine magic in the back garden while Kushina spoke to Kakashi inside the kitchen. She watched her husband fondly through the window as she held a cup of warm green tea in her hands. 

“It was years later when we befriended a demon and she told me the thread was real.”

That moment, when he was still alive, before nature’s fury, before his execution, Kakashi felt damnably bitter and jealous. He was flawless as a nin; he took to magic like he was made of the stuff. He was as swift on his feet as Minato-sensei, he could compete with Kushina in tests of power. Although he wasn’t a demon or an angel, or a wizard or a witch, Kakashi combined all of them to create something unique, something the world had never seen before.

But then there was the earthquake and the tsunami, and the new century made Kakashi want to leave Japan and wander the wider world with his two closest friends.

So they had explored Earth, the three of them.

There were moments – so many tense passing moments – when Kakashi wanted to ask Obito if he saw the red thread of fate between them, but he had always chickened out.

Then he’d been captured by the High Council after one too many wild missions in Great Britain. Obito and Rin were trapped far away in the Chauvet Caves, thousands of years of humanity catching them in the mystical interplay of light and shadow. But there was no blaming them: it was Kakashi’s reckless overconfidence that got him caught and had him standing alone on the gallows.

Then there was a knotted rope crushing his windpipe, and lightning zipping over his body, crackling over his sweat, and then wood was under his fingernails, then wet dirt, and a golden-fire ring flickered around a pitch-black moon. 

He drank the church sexton dry, left the skin and bones on the altar.

Obito and Rin found him months later, and they tried to stay together, but then another earthquake upset everything and Kakashi lost a friend and gained a demon eye.

There was no seeing the red thread of fate at that point… not with Obito dead.

It was not even a year later when Rin was kidnapped in the same way as Kushina. Her captors weren’t witch-hunters but insane cultists, wanting Rin to fall from grace and use the body of a fallen angel in their grand design to destroy the world. Their magic was corrupting, seeping into her shimmering divine skin, and she had begged, _begged_ Kakashi to kill her, to take her life, end the life given to her by God, and he had refused, thinking of Obito and how he would have done anything to save him from the rubble of the collapsed Lisbon church.

But Rin had her way: she intercepted a blow meant for a religious cultist.

Kakashi’s hand went through her skin, muscle, bones - and into her right wing.

They were both crying when she dissipated into a beautiful rainbow.

No… he had never seen a red thread of fate, even after three hundred years of having a demon eye, not until this morning… between Naruto, Sasuke, and an angel apparently named Sakura.

Just as Kakashi went to drop his face into his gloved hands, he heard from in front of him the oh-so-familiar cry of a truly dangerous man:

“ETERNAL RIVAL! Are you waiting for your beloved hard-working Iruka?? You are so CHIVALROUS!”

On instinct, Kakashi opened his demon eye: he found Maito Gai in all his cursed glory, covered in green fire, standing akimbo on the sidewalk. With his white-burning eyes cast down to the table for safety’s sake, the immortal gave Kakashi a triumphant thumb’s up. Clad in his usual twenty-first century gear, Gai looked like a P.E. coach or a retired mafia hitman. His black track-suit and too-white tennis shoes oddly matched his black bowl-cut hair and shiny teeth. 

Apparently not wanting a hug today, Gai overlooked Kakashi’s lack of response, slid into the seat across from him, and cheerily ordered the largest smoothie on the menu. 

He put his face in his hands and quirked a large black eyebrow. 

“Dish, Rival!” Gai exclaimed eagerly. “You look miserable!” He suddenly looked stricken – really utterly destroyed – and declared, raising one huge hand to cover half of his face, “Do not tell me you and Iruka are fighting! My heart would break!”

Kakashi stared at the immortal for far too long. He was frankly surprised that Gai didn’t give in and start talking… but the cursed human merely looked at him with big worried eyes. Looking away from his friend, Kakashi ran fingers through his silver hair and admitted in a low voice, “I want to give Iruka everything in the world, but I can’t even figure out a wedding.” 

“Oh, my Eternal Rival!” Gai instantly crowed. 

Kakashi didn’t have to look at him to know Gai was weeping at the confession.

“First invite your friends!” the immortal explained enthusiastically. He was tapping the metal café table with his index finger as if Kakashi should be writing down each of his words. The poor waitress – who had grown accustomed to her strange solitary customer – dropped off Gai’s smoothie so quickly that she was only a white-and-black blur in his periphery.

Unable to stop himself, Kakashi muttered under his breath, “He doesn’t have any friends.” He paused, regretting the comment, but then he forced himself to add, “His family’s dead.”

Gai hummed loudly and then drank half his smoothie in one noisy go. As Kakashi turned to glance at him, slowly closing off Obito’s eye, he was surprised to see movement instead. The immortal suddenly stood up with battlefield swiftness – and then struck an action hero pose, pointing a calloused finger high above to the cloudy skies.

“I will rectify this, I promise you, Rival!” Gai declared with such resolve, it was hard not to believe that he wouldn’t push the moon and sun out of his way, too. “Do not worry! Our two hundred- and forty-three-year friendship has all led up to this very moment. I will not disappoint you or dear sweet Iruka!”

Before Kakashi could even ask what the Hell Gai was babbling about, the man disappeared down the street in a full run, the sort of run that immediately reminded Kakashi of the time Gai had patted him on the back and cried, “Do not worry! I will be quick, I promise!” in the stinking sunken trenches of France and flew over the embankment into screaming artillery after the unit’s stray dog, the mutt that had gotten scared and escaped into no man’s land.

Kakashi was on his feet, scared out of his mind, staring after Gai, just like he had in 1916.

… but Gai had saved the little dog. He’d come back. He dodged bullets. He survived.

Time went blurry again. Kakashi waited hours, escorted Iruka home, cooked miso ramen. The day repeated, the clock turned over, again and again. He watched Naruto with more interest: the thread didn’t show with such distance between him, Sasuke, and Sakura, but the Fox’s energy was always red-hot and burning now. As a result, Iruka unknowingly responded to the elevated excitement, frequently hugging the kid and cheerfully talking to Kakashi at high speed. He fortunately wasn’t more passionate during sex, something Kakashi was secretly relieved about. If that started to happen, Kakashi would have to explain the thread, its effects on Naruto’s chakra, and how Iruka was positively reacting as a byproduct.

He was just not prepared to have that conversation, especially since he didn’t understand what the three-way thread of fate meant – not much beyond its unimaginable importance, anyway. 

Feeling far too tired and confused, Kakashi was relieved when Naruto told them that the Anime Club was holding an overnight marathon of Hayao Miyazaki films in the school cafeteria and please please please could he go?

It had been forty-seven days since Obito’s attack.

Iruka was fully healed.

They hadn’t talked again about the wedding.

They were together on the couch, Iruka curled up against him as _Oh My Shinobi!_ played on the television. Their sex life hadn’t lessened, but their communication hadn’t terribly improved, so they sat in silence as they watched the show. Even though Kakashi knew he should be trying to talk more, admit more about who he was, he found that he was distracted by the thread – and… were he and Iruka meant for each other? Was Kakashi just an exciting strange thing to Iruka? Was he just enticing an inexperienced werewolf into marriage? Had he proposed something permanent because he was broken and he knew Iruka was alone and would try to heal him and –

“I love you.”

Kakashi slowly stared down at Iruka’s pretty brown hair.

The werewolf hadn’t moved, he was still cuddled against Kakashi. Yet he’d said those three words with such sweet meaning, such perfect calm. 

Kakashi could count each single second as they passed, one by one.

Just as he found the courage to reply –

A thick shower of autumn maple leaves dropped down on the coffee table, and a wood-brown portal opened above it, revealing the ghoulish-eyed face of his long-lost kouhai, Tenzo. Without stopping to think, Kakashi covered Iruka with his body and was mid-snarl, demanding what the fuck the druid was doing, when Tenzo caught hold of his wrist and _yanked hard._

The three of them went sprawling, spiraling through the portal.

Kakashi was on top of Tenzo, choking the very fucking life out of him, when suddenly –

Maito Gai’s crazy loud voice boomed in his ear:

_“Happy Surprise Bachelor Party!!”_


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My apologies for such a long delay. I appreciate your patience.
> 
> I missed you - and writing.
> 
> May you enjoy.
> 
>  
> 
> __________

Iruka was having so much fun!

He almost caught the black serval, but Kotetsu dodged him at the last second. No matter! Izumo was right there, floating above the tile, and Iruka swung around mid-air, snapping his wolf jaws at the sleek white serval. This time, Izumo flipped higher into the sky and showed off his huge black eyes, letting the Italian sunlight turn them into elementary school glitter.

It was impossible to be angry! The two cats were just so pretty! 

Iruka missed on purpose. He landed on the glazed porcelain tile and looked up at the two felines, assuming a play position. Hovering above the infinity pool, Kotetsu and Izumo were shoulder-to-shoulder, their short tails wrapped together, their large ears held high and oriented to him. Both had their mouths open, revealing no tongues, as if overheated and panting. Their opposing colors vibrated in vivid contrast with each other. 

Black cat, white eyes. White cat, black eyes.

Shiny cats! Beautiful cats!

But they were playing dirty. They knew Iruka didn’t want to get in the pool! He tried to appeal to them silently by lowering further into a play position and giving a long whine. But, no. Damn. They weren’t moved. Kotetsu and Izumo still had the golden bells hanging on their necks. They weren’t finished with keep-away, but they were making it hard for Iruka, just too hard.

He didn’t want to get soaked at his and Kakashi’s Bachelor Party!

Oh, wait! Kakashi! Where is -! 

Iruka turned and surveyed the back of the Sardinian villa. It was midday here, not nighttime like back in the city. He could see very well, better than any point in his life: the mansion was enormous, the private garden was huge, and the loggia was so big. That’s where the lovely gallery opened to the infinity pool, and that’s where – yes – he could see – there was Kakashi! 

He was standing beside Tenzo, the druid, Kakashi’s kouhai. 

Yes. The cute human who smelled like the forests outside the city. The same woods that had suddenly sprouted after the Demon Fox attack. 

Tenzo was talking to Kakashi with big black fawning eyes like a pup gazing up at his older packmate: it was adorable, so very adorable.

Even from a hundred feet away, Kakashi smelled so. very. good. He didn’t smell lonely anymore! Kakashi wasn’t lonely anymore because of Iruka. Naruto, too. They were a pack. A family. And, thrillingly, Kakashi and Iruka were getting married soon!

As Iruka started to pad forward to touch noses with his mate, Kotetsu and Izumo flew down in unison and whirled about him, purring so wildly loudly it was distracting. He was excited to see them being jealous; he instantly turned around and jumped after the pair. Staying intertwined, Kotetsu and Izumo had a tough time implementing a countermotion, and so Iruka finally, _finally_ caught the little bell on Kotetsu’s black neck and tore it off. He kept it in his teeth and stuck out his tongue in a calculated show of success. 

Izumo’s crystalline laughter rang about Iruka’s head. 

_You got one all by yourself! Kotetsu - you lost yours!_

Kotetsu’s peeved retort came only a second later.

_Should I help Iruka? You want to go it alone?_

The two larger-than-life felines darted about the porcelain tile, excitedly messing with each other with fake nips and bites. It was easy enough to tell them apart: Kotetsu was all-black and Izumo, all-white. They perfectly contrasted like night and day, moon and sun, earth and sea, yin and yang, as they bounced about the grounds of the Italian villa. 

It was difficult to intrude on them, because they were just so complete together, but Iruka wanted the other bell badly, very badly. The pair had told him Kakashi taught them this game long ago - they hadn’t ever won themselves – but he would, he would get both bells. 

Still, they were spirit animals, and Iruka was but a werewolf.

No matter! He lunged for Izumo, who expertly dodged him, backflipping into the green. Kotetsu put up a dazzling display of pitch-black shadow for his partner, apparently turning back to adoration of his own mate. They didn’t do the awful thing and float back over the infinity pool. However, without Kotetsu protecting his own bell, the game was much more difficult, and Iruka felt less capable all of a sudden. His play-bowing diminished; worry swirled through him. Maybe he wouldn’t win the game? Maybe he would be an embarrassment to Kakashi?

Yet Iruka would try, he had to try. He bounded forward – and his paws hit wood not grass! Instead of tripping, sparkling energy flowed through him; it kept him moving up the abruptly-appearing tree outside the loggia. A determined shout caught him by surprise: Tenzo had walked forward on the tile while making rapid hand motions. The druid smiled at him and then nodded upwards at Izumo, who was now doing his best impression of Grumpy Cat.

Kotetsu looked displeased, too, but he worked hard in defense of his partner. Nonetheless, Tenzo’s wood-bending was beautiful, and Iruka felt very excited by the change of events. He used the newly summoned tree branches with tremendous gusto! Somehow, pain meant little, and energy blew through him at insane speeds. His paws worked well on the wood; he felt absolutely at ease as he jumped through the air after the two fleeing spirit cats. 

They were all having so much fun! He could tell: every time Izumo got too far out of reach, the feline would glance back at Iruka, his black eyes glittering. The tiny gold bell hung on his white fur, and Iruka’s focus never drifted from the object. With Tenzo’s magical help, and the spirits’ enjoyment of their play, the game never got old, and Iruka was closer and closer to –

Was Kakashi watching him?

He looked back towards the mansion, but his fiancé wasn’t there. 

Not paying attention to his paws, Iruka realized a moment too late that he had missed the branch Tenzo had just created for him, and he fell down into the infinity pool with a loud splash.

The warm water woke him up: he went from wolf to man in an instant. Without anything holding back his hair, Iruka had to comb aside the brown locks now curtaining his face. He snorted up water, rubbing at his eyes and tingling scar, before swimming to the front of the pool and holding onto the side with more than a tiny little bit of misery filling his form. 

After also transforming back into men, Kotetsu and Izumo joined him a moment later. They did not parallel each other in their human builds: both were relatively tan-skinned, but Izumo’s hair was dark brown and Kotetsu’s near-black, with each of their eyes being dark and delighted. They came over to rest on either side of Iruka, both kicking their legs and smiling at him. 

Dropping his head onto his arm, Kotetsu glanced over at Iruka and asked in an ecstatic drawl, “Did you want to keep playing? We think you could beat us with Tenzo on your side.”

It was a bit hard to focus. Iruka found himself looking back with blurry, bewildered human eyes. He turned his head to his left and saw Izumo had taken up in the same position. They were just as naked as he was, but it seemed different. They were yin-yang spirit animals, this wasn’t their real form, the felines were; he was a corporeal temporary being, he was wolf and man.

What was Kakashi?

Where _was_ Kakashi?

Two massive hands dropped down on his wet shoulders. As Iruka gazed slowly upwards, his nerves resettled, recognizing the villa owner – one of Kakashi’s oldest friends – a long-lived wizard with a penchant for wielding magical daggers.

“Asuma,” he said, feeling weirdly relieved. 

Being nearly the same shape as Gai, Asuma was a giant: he was dark-haired, thickly bearded, constantly smoking. He’d immediately given Kakashi a cigarette earlier when he greeted them. It had made Iruka very confused, he hadn’t thought Kakashi smoked cigarettes, but his fiancé took it right away as he looked deeply bothered in consideration of their surroundings. 

Blowing smoke over his shoulder, Asuma was incredibly close, he smelled like burnt tobacco and melting copper - and then he pulled Iruka upwards out of the water, placing a soft towel around Iruka’s waist in a single smooth motion. 

After giving a wave to Kotetsu and Izumo, Asuma brought Iruka forward past Tenzo. The druid gave Iruka a smile, his big almond-shaped eyes dark and proud and adoring; he headed over to the two spirits in the pool as Asuma walked Iruka inside the villa again. The extreme air conditioning kept the mansion at a zealously chill temperature, making Iruka curl about himself and press into Asuma, desperately wanting the wizard’s warmth. He nearly buried his face in the wizard’s armpit, smelling more than tobacco and metal, now absorbing deodorant and sex.

Yes. That’s right. 

As they walked through the party, full of strange and interesting people, Iruka instantaneously located Asuma’s mate based on her scent. She and Asuma shared matching scents, just like Kotetsu and Izumo, the spirits’ faint fluttery smell that spun together like braided ribbon. He’d met her earlier. She was so pretty and so strong! 

Iruka found himself smiling at her in a daze as Asuma laughed above his head and directed him further into the mansion. They were in a guest bedroom. So many different smells from all sorts of wizards and witches visiting them from all over the world, including Tenzo quite a bit. His was the strongest scent, altered by sexual arousal and release.

Oh, because Tenzo and Asuma and Kurenai had been together!

A lot.

Huh. Neat.

Kurenai walked into the room, giggling to herself, just as Asuma purposefully sat Iruka down on the opulent bed. She ran a manicured hand through her hair and then did the same to Iruka a few times, causing him to close his eyes in satisfaction and smile glowingly up at her. 

“Iruka-sensei, I can’t believe you stole a bell from those two brats! What a good wolf you are.”

He felt her pause at the back of his head, where Kakashi had made his mark months ago.

“Where’s Kakashi?” he asked, his voice wobbly, his tongue thick in his mouth. It seemed impossible to peel open his eyes, but he did, and Kurenai was just as pretty as before. She shone with magic: she was pregnant, and Iruka wanted to stay here until she gave birth so he could protect her and her pup. But! But he was getting married soon. And, of course, Naruto needed him. The three of them had a home back in the city. They were a family. They were a pack.

Grinning from ear to ear, cigarette burning bright, Asuma turned around and held in both hands an extraordinary Italian yukata of turquoise silk with fields of white-and-orange tulips throughout the fabric.

“This is your wedding present, Iruka-sensei!”

It was so ridiculously elegant and above Iruka’s worth, he just stared and stared. When he didn’t move, Kurenai gently pulled him to his feet, and Asuma helped dress him in the yukata. Together they turned to the closet, both opening the door wider to reveal a large ornate gilded mirror, each gesturing to Iruka to step forward and see himself dressed in the new outfit.

Oh, he was pretty. 

Like Kakashi.

“Thank you,” he said so very hushed, the words came out whispered.

His senses were crazily heighted: Iruka could differentiate each and every silk fiber. He had no idea how long he was staring down at the yukata sleeve, but Asuma and Kurenai were laughing, not at him, but at something else. They guided him out of the guest room through the party.

Iruka saw Gai and Itachi amidst the fascinating people as the couple led him over to a fine leather couch. He tried to get their attention, but the two men were instead very focused on the busty blonde woman standing in front of them. She smelled like dried ground-up herbal powder and rivers of strong liquor. Having apparently just spoken before Iruka noticed her, the witch just then flicked some of the black hair framing the demon’s face and presented him a wide curling smile. 

As Asuma adjusted his loose hold on Iruka’s elbow, Iruka had time to watch Itachi’s eyebrows furrow ever so slightly in response.

Gai’s hand snapped through the air and wrenched the witch’s arm away from Itachi. 

Oh, he’d broken her wrist!

Gai looked so serious! 

He was saying to her, “If you touch him again, I will break your spine.”

Gosh, they loved each other. Just like Kotetsu and Izumo. Just like Asuma and Kurenai.

Or maybe Asuma, Kurenai, and Tenzo, too?

Iruka’s head rested on the arm of the leather couch as Kurenai petted his head, leisurely using magic to warm and dry his wet hair. His bare legs stretched across her wizard husband’s lap. Iruka kept touching the supple leather, enjoying the unique sensation on the arches of his feet. He was gesturing with both hands waving far above him, trying to explain just how amazing Kakashi’s breakfasts were.

“He makes toast like you wouldn’t believe,” Iruka told them very seriously. He knew he was _really_ out of it, but warm heavy pleasure swum through his system. His tongue hung heavy and oversensitive in his mouth; his hands were graceful but oh so slow as they orchestrated the enormity of Kakashi’s breakfast buffets.

“His tea is incredible,” he remarked wistfully, wanting it now. He’d had something to drink earlier, when they first got here, and it had tasted like someone had pulped the Library of Alexandria, shredded the scales and feathers of Chichen Itza statues, and crumbled the towers of Angkor Wat.

It was _revolting_.

It also made him _drunk._

But also so happy! Really, very happy!

Kakashi had friends! All these people liked Kakashi! A lot! 

They ~*loved*~ him!

Suddenly, Iruka knew to look left.

There… there he was. His beautiful, delicate, resilient fiancé. 

Kakashi sure looked haunted right now. Surprise darkened his lovely features: he looked mysteriously loose, but his focus was on Iruka, completely ignoring the two hosts of their Bachelor Party. As usual, Kakashi was glorious and gorgeous in whatever he wore. Unlike Iruka, who had been thrown through the portal in his pajamas, Kakashi was still attractively in business casual, now an even starker juxtaposition to Iruka’s silky flowery yukata.

It was so easy to jump off the couch, rush forward, and grab him!

Iruka poured himself into the kiss. He made certain to hold Kakashi tight, keep his hands on the man’s cold cheekbones and threaded into his thick silver hair. Their bodies were made for each other: Iruka was so hot, he was burning up, he was in love, and Kakashi was glacial melt-water, softening wondrously against Iruka’s hard body. Their kiss was utterly perfect: Iruka wanted it to last forever.

“I have to talk to you,” Iruka suddenly insisted, looking up and seeing only Kakashi’s single black eye, shining and dark and entranced by him and their kiss.

Then he was pulling the other man through the crowd, their hands interlocked.

His wolf senses were racing: he knew just where to go.

Outside the villa. A private guest house. Surrounded by spectacular magical gardens.

It seemed simple enough to kick down the door, toss Kakashi inside, and then jam the door back into place. 

He was so very pleased to be alone with his mate once again. 

Finally!

So he said, absolutely obsessed with the sight of a stunned, disheveled, blushing Kakashi:

“There’s something I have to tell you.”


	18. Chapter 18

Just when he’d given in and finally decided to drink something – the first time in twenty years! – instead of sugary liquor-filled punch, Kakashi got a mouthful of magic.

He hadn’t carefully sipped on it… he’d thrown the whole thing back. The very next moment, rainbow butterflies exploded about his insides, shooting through his sizzling nervous system. Purple crashed into his undead eyeball. Blue coated his tongue. Green slimed over his skeleton. Yellow twisted through his digestive system. Orange seized his muscles. Red – well, red –

Kakashi’s heart ached like a feral cat scratching for freedom. He tried to contain his physical reaction, but that only made it worse, causing him to shake his head and open Obito’s eye in surprise. The party was in full-swing, an electric-eclectic collection of half of the world’s most powerful people, all concentrated in a single Sotheby’s-level Sardinian villa. Instinct forced him to turn around and find the three people he thought were most likely to spike the punch.

Orochimaru wiggled his black eyebrows as well as several pale fingers directly at Kakashi from across the room. The motherfucker was still a mad scientist three hundred years later, dressed in both a lacquer-black satin-weave kimono and a pink-and-white Hello Kitty trucker hat. The wizard held up a champagne glass in a celebratory toast to Kakashi and Iruka’s engagement. Beside him was - of course - his two irritating companions, Jiraiya and Tsunade, both grinning big fierce awful grins, also holding up glasses towards Kakashi. 

By the time he looked back at Iruka…

The man was already a wolf: he was right out the door, chasing Kotetsu and Izumo in their monochrome spirit forms. Magically-induced carelessness strengthened the werewolf’s bones, made his actions quicker, his attacks more powerful. The man had been initially overwhelmed by the sight of the villa – and the two-dozen odd-looking peculiar people inside it – but now… 

Iruka was clearly having fun. He hadn’t been troubled ripping apart his clothes when he transformed, nor did he seem bothered by the throbbing cosmological forces shattering the porcelain tile every time the two spirits landed on it.

Kakashi leaned against the doorframe; Tenzo immediately joined him. 

“This stuff is _strong_ , senpai!” the druid half-whined, half-laughed. With Obito’s eye open, a languid glance at Tenzo revealed everything at once: otherwise invisible blackberries, blueberries, and raspberries swirled about him like small moons orbiting a planet. The man was in good health. The last time Kakashi had seen Tenzo, his kouhai was exhausted and out-of-breath but still flinging about magic as he rebuilt the forests after the Nine-Tailed Fox’s wildfires. 

So he had survived, after all.

“You’ve advanced,” Kakashi remarked in a concise but leisurely style. He was much more captivated by Iruka jumping and turning about by the infinity pool; he was barely willing to speak aloud, he was so interested. Nonetheless, some strange part of him wanted to say hello to his old kouhai… and so…

Out of the corner of Obito’s eye, Tenzo looked outright startled by the praise. “Oh! I – yeah, I’ve been practicing a lot,” the druid stammered, slowly turning ever redder. “Asuma and Kurenai took me in. They’ve been teaching me how to adapt arcane magic.” He paused, then said more firmly, a bit boastful: “I can portal almost anywhere now.”

He really couldn’t look away from Iruka: the werewolf was smoothly sailing through the sweet summer air as he chased after the yin-yang spirits in his pure reckless joy.

But Kakashi could currently taste sapphire – both the stone and the color – so…

“You’re the only junior I respect.”

At the compliment, Tenzo’s oval eyes widened considerably. His druidic magic immediately reformed the berries into a wide array of flowers, mostly yellow roses, sentimental signs of friendship and happiness. His fair skin went full red: he simply couldn’t handle anything more than a rushed-hushed reply, “Thank you, senpai.” 

Sometime later, Tenzo mustered up bravery once more, remarking quietly, “He seems wonderful, senpai. I’m so happy for you.”

Kakashi was sharing the world with his long-lived kouhai and a whole host of strange men and women, but he could really only see Iruka Umino, playful, dedicated, dangerous in his delight. The werewolf was the embodiment of freedom as he bounded about the villa. In contrast, Kakashi felt fear restraining him even now, stringing his bones taut to his muscles, making his heart heavy. Even with Maito Gai, truly his closest friend, he rarely let anyone as close as Tenzo was now standing to him - except since Iruka had swept into his unlife with large lupine eyes, breaking all the rules, things had gradually, rapidly begun to change with him.

_Speak of the Devil, and he shall come._

Making a soundless exclamation of excitement, Gai pulled Kakashi into a backwards embrace and then kicked Tenzo forward with one foot, wordlessly suggesting that he go play outside with everyone else.

With the extra magic flooding his system, Kakashi had heard the approach, but…

But no need to admit that. Let his friend easily hug him for once.

Gai was also speeding, but it was impossible to discern if that was the spiked punch or just the immortal’s natural state. He was talking about a million miles a minute, gushing over how professionally Tenzo had taken everyone through the portal, lauding Asuma and Kurenai as kind and generous hosts. As always, Gai didn’t fall for Obito’s eye: his gaze rested on Kakashi’s collarbone, able to stop himself from meeting the constant-magic of the demon eye. Yet Gai made the averted stare seem so ordinary and casual, Kakashi found himself smiling, small but true, really quite taken with his immortal friend.

It was apparently not the smartest thing to do – because it caused Gai to break into big, crazy tears. He yanked Kakashi back into another embrace, this one so dramatic and crushing that Kakashi felt a few of his ribs crack under the strain.

It was very interesting to feel his ribcage just as quickly crackle back together.

So Orochimaru’s spiked drink included advanced healing, too, hm? That would explain how Iruka was spinning so wildly without any consequences: he was healing almost immediately after his injuries, and the high from the magic was disguising the shock from pain.

Itachi was standing behind Gai, looking remarkably dead to the world. 

And yet… he had clearly drank some of the punch. His black shadow form was in total disarray, literally spiking all over in different directions. 

To Gai and the rest of the normal-eyed party, the demon would have seemed utterly at peace, unbothered by the loud music, talkative oddities, and the rowdy game being played outside. 

But Kakashi had a demon eye, and he saw the truth: Itachi was totally blitzed. 

It was impossible for Kakashi not to smirk at Itachi over Gai’s shoulder. He made it very clear that he could tell the demon was inebriated by glancing with both eyes towards the messy edges of Itachi’s sloppy shadow form. He had to hold back laughter when Itachi scrunched up his nose at him and made both a pissy ‘aren’t-you-so-cool’ and ‘please-die-in-a-fire’ expression.

But then Kurenai was there, and she pulled Kakashi to the other side of the villa. She was magic-drunk, too: her witchiness was going wild, buzzing with raw electricity and shining like twinkling city lights. She was slower than Gai as she spoke, but Kakashi was still sort-of outside. 

Thick timber wolf fur in the bright sunlight. Wide-open, excited yellow eyes. Pink tongue hanging out. Wolf claws clacking on Italian tile. 

Iruka was having fun. He deserved to have fun.

“This is your wedding present.”

There was an amulet in his hands, one that radiated power. He could tell how much effort Asuma and Kurenai had put into it – and Tenzo, too, it seemed. With Obito’s eye unworriedly studying the small object, it was easy to fully appreciate the magic embedded in the heart-shaped orange-red gemstone. Enough protection magic to defend a whole city. All kinds. A wizard, a witch, a druid, the three intertwined into something unique, powerful, truly brilliant.

“Thank you,” he said.

Kurenai laughed in response. “He’s such a good influence on you!”

“I want to be at home with Iruka,” Kakashi replied shortly, standing up. Instead of being offended, however, the witch only laughed a little more and gave him a warm look of understanding. 

He wandered away. 

Then: so many one-sided conversations with people from his past. 

The holy paladins from that time he helped the Vatican came up to him. The two knights accosted him with new stories and plates of grilled seafood. Genma and Raido were both incredibly wasted, but they still bombarded him with updates about the skeletal saints. Together they cheerfully explained the zombies had stayed put in their crypts after their three-man power-push into the dungeons during the spring when the Pope had fallen ill.

One of the Ferrymen to Hell was there. They said nothing to each other. Just drank next each other in silence. For those few minutes, Kakashi considered Ibiki to be his best friend - after Maito Gai.

Of course, he avoided Orochimaru, Tsunade, and Jiraiya, who became increasingly drunk. At one point, the witch of their threesome was so bold as to go over and bother Itachi Uchiha. It was strange to see the incident while squeezed between the massive bodies of the three intoxicated Vikings – Choza, Inoichi, and Shikaku – if only because Kakashi’s expectation of Itachi dramatically disappearing into his shadow so he could avoid conflict was so very wrong. 

Instead, Gai appeared out of nowhere in a colorful flash; he firmly forced Tsunade away as if she wasn’t the strongest witch currently in existence. 

Obito’s eye made it very clear to Kakashi that Gai was controlling his fury as one might jerk back the reins on a screaming stallion. The green flames burned so bright that they nearly overwhelmed Itachi’s black shadow. Still, it was most fascinating to see the demon’s body during the encounter: the black mass of crows and swords stopped behaving erratically with the immortal’s abrupt appearance, dropping down tight and into Itachi’s illusory body.

With Tsunade gone, Gai turned around, leaned down, checked on Itachi. There were a few words exchanged – short, soft words of concern – and the demon’s otherwise-invisible shadow reached out and surrounded Gai in the most wicked but receptive sort of magical embrace. 

Then – just like that – 

Itachi took Gai into his shadow, and the two of them vanished from sight.

Ah. Where is Iruka. Where is he.

The colors were less vivid now, the magic was beginning to melt out of Kakashi’s already unusual body. In its slow-fading wake, he felt extraordinarily tired but also somehow very honest with himself, his wants, his needs.

He wanted Iruka, yes, but he –

He needed the werewolf, too. 

Kakashi was not expecting to find Iruka Umino draped across the wizard-witch pair who he worked with during World War I. He could still see them in the muddy trenches, with Gai so deathly pale beside him, desperately trying to save the brief mortal lives of British men. Kurenai’s illusion destroying the visual of their section, making the horrific artillery of the Triple Alliance shift elsewhere for murder and mayhem. Asuma slashing free a stolen German howitzer, turning the enormous instrument of death on its makers. 

Mud splatter, blood spray, magic burning like white phosphorous.

Here and now, though –

Asuma was ogling Iruka’s defined calf muscles, and Kurenai was far-too-fondly petting Iruka’s unbound hair, while the werewolf himself seemed to be conducting a musical masterpiece.

But just as Kakashi froze up – 

Strong hands deep in his hair, calloused palms on his cheeks, Iruka pressed against him, kissing him. Not a bit of shame, no sense of embarrassment. Just profound love, pouring right out of him. Kakashi kissed him back, his concerns of public affection dissipating instantly. Yet the man wasn’t done with him, not in the least, because Iruka beautifully flushed, looked up at Kakashi, and said in the most serious but desperate tone he’d ever used: “I have to talk to you.”

Then they were across the villa moving through Tenzo’s gardens. An impressive kick from Iruka took down the door, which the werewolf corrected only after he one-handedly tossed Kakashi inside in the same way he might lob a baseball to homeplate. Then the breathtaking man turned to him, declared with stars in his dark eyes, “There’s something I have to tell you,” and caught Kakashi’s hands in his own, pulling them up from hanging uselessly against his jeans. 

The world disappeared. 

There was only Iruka’s face.

His sweet, sincere words. His dark eyes, full of promise. His strong, tender touch.

Love reverberated in the space where Kakashi’s soul had been.

“You said,” Iruka began, his voice becoming progressively stronger as he spoke. “That you would do anything for me, when you were drunk, in front of my parent’s grave. I don’t know if you remember saying it, but I do.” He paused, his eyes watering, his lower lip quivering. “I always will.” 

Kakashi’s typically powerful body betrayed him: he was trembling, delighted, disturbed. His brain filled in the blanks, reminding him of snow melting on Iruka’s scarred brown shoulders.

“I want you to know, Kakashi –”

Iruka’s hands turned solid, secure, and sure as the werewolf held even tighter to his fingers.

 _“I would do anything for you, too.”_

He gazed up at Kakashi with all the commitment on the planet coalescing into his intense expression of dedication. 

“I would fight a dragon for you!” Iruka swore suddenly, meaning it so thoroughly that he actually broke two of Kakashi’s fingers and didn’t notice. The bones immediately repaired themselves, thanks to the spiked punch, but it somehow wasn’t the strangest thing happening. 

Kakashi wondering with increasing amazement that Iruka was withstanding Obito’s eye, staying upright, speaking normally, and remaining absolutely truthful through his confession. 

As if professing was the highest form of love, Iruka stepped forward and announced so dangerously seriously that it was hard to remember that the promise was absurd: “I would learn how to make ramen for you, Kakashi.” 

Just then the man’s honesty went warm and wild: Iruka’s eyes wavered, wolf-hue yellow swiftly flooding across both, as he declared, voice clear and ringing: “I love you. I’ll love you forever.”

There had been moments in human-supernatural history where Kakashi’s speed had counted more than anything else in the world. In 1703, he’d outrun the tsunami in Japan that wiped out his people's village. Years later, in Spain, he’d been too slow dodging a crumbling church, causing Obito to shove him out of the way and be crushed in a space so sacred it seemingly killed him. Beyond that, he’d turned too rapidly on a cultist, not looking where his fist was, and he had destroyed one of God’s most beloved creatures, his very first companion in this cold world. 

He’d shoved Gai out of the way of sniper rifle bullets; he’d flung both Genma and Raido out of the black hole of swarming undead, letting monsters crash into him instead; he’d avoided Ibiki’s cold grasp when the Ferryman reached for him, so many times, so many times; he’d caught Kotetsu and Izumo by their tails and tossed them out of the entrapment hurricane spun out by nihilist Apocalypse-summoners; he’d taken a lightning bolt meant for the three Vikings and their supernatural ship sailing on their eternal conquest; he’d put himself between Itachi Uchiha and an enraged remorseless angel, showing only a blank expression and a sword ready for divine blood; he’d watched the world’s most insane trio come together within the Earth’s core, align their magic with the moon, protect the whole planet from a terrifying enormous meteor; he’d destroyed an armor-piercing forty-two centimeter shell by punching it out of the air, protecting a wide-eyed Kurenai and Asuma trapped amid magic-enhanced barbed wire.

Most significantly, though…

Kakashi had been overly relaxed when he washed his hair in his studio, leaving the shower, drying himself off; he’d noticed far too late the scarred werewolf standing in his apartment.

This moment… he was precisely on time as he drew his hands up to Iruka’s shoulders and stared at the very same werewolf with both eyes, one once-mortal and the other demon flesh.

He admitted aloud the secret hidden deep inside him.

“I’m going to die when you die.”

Hearing it aloud did not seem very romantic… it slowly and strangely occurred to him.

Yet, surprising the unlife out of him, Iruka burst into tears and then clung desperately to him. He was mumbling something into Kakashi’s shirt while weeping rather uncontrollably. It took a long moment for Kakashi to notice that Iruka was wearing a truly exquisite silk yukata woven by the worshippers of Aradia, the Queen of Witches and a Moon Goddess, instead of his pajamas. 

The magical yukata might help explain the blooming explosive feeling in his chest, why his skin suddenly felt like he was swimming through the fires of Hell once again, the sensation of losing his breath in outer space as if all the oxygen was sucked out of him and being crushed into smaller and smaller particles. Had he the ability to look past his ribs, Kakashi was certain he’d find something small, burning, shattering into volcanic glass shards, lava bubbling bright red. His whole body felt covered in flesh-melting debris; he thought about the people in Pompeii, caught in the streets, huddling with their loved ones, as molten rock and hot ash buried them.

He wanted one thing, one person.

Iruka Umino.

They kissed like they were there, standing together, underneath Mount Vesuvius’s eruption. 

It was such a relief, kissing so wonderfully, with the pyroclastic heat cooling in his chest, that Kakashi became yet again distracted while Iruka shifted to dangerously intent. Suddenly they weren’t standing in the private suite's entrance, passionately holding onto each other. Instead Kakashi was thrown backward on the kitchen island, his shirt riding up, his undead skin bare to the cold marble. Taking up their kiss again with delicious crazy zeal, Iruka bowed over him, pushing their hips together in a truly sinful way.

Iruka’s mouth went to Kakashi’s throat, where the werewolf first bit him so long ago, and there he whispered breathlessly against the sweat flushed skin, “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t say this, but…” 

He pulled up to meet both of Kakashi’s eyes, still able to handle the demon magic. It was so very impossible, improbable, fantastical, but, then again, Iruka’s weren’t their normal dark color, either. In its place was the fearsome, feral color of a werewolf’s eyes during the full moon: Kakashi was entranced by the sight, having never seen such color on a werewolf in their human shape, nor on any creature who was this close without thinking they meant to kill him.

The werewolf before him definitely did _not_ mean kill him.

Oh, no… instead… Iruka whispered, oh so softly, sincerely, “I want to make love to you.”

Kakashi stared back at Iruka for what seemed like the entirety of his life and unlife.

“Yes,” he answered, silken, delicate, unable to say anything more.

The gold-yellow hue of Iruka’s eyes darkened in response. He swore, deeply diligent, not looking away from own Kakashi’s worshipping gaze, “I only want what you want.”

It was so easy for Kakashi to confess:

“I want you. I want this.”


	19. Chapter 19

“No,” Kakashi said a second later, his heart suddenly burning bright. “I don’t just want you.” 

Reaching forward, he grabbed the front of Iruka’s magic-soaked yukata while closing Obito’s demon eye. The werewolf still had enough wits about him to be surprised, but he didn’t protest, letting Kakashi pull their bodies together on top of the kitchen island. There was so much blood pulsing through Iruka Umino, through his veins, through his whole body. It wasn’t just arousing: it was thrilling, bringing out the best-worst of the magical intoxication still melting out of Kakashi’s system, making his head spin and his thoughts swirl madly. 

He was purposeful as he breathed, cold and obsessed, into Iruka’s ear, “I need you.”

Then there was such a whirlwind of activity that only supernatural senses saved his understanding of the situation so swiftly unfolding in front of him. The excruciating yukata was flung aside – an ocean wave of turquoise crashing across the marble-made kitchen. Rough hands were pulling down the waistband of his jeans, forcing the tight fabric from his thighs. Kakashi was already reacting at the same time: he had his shirt over his head using both arms, exposing his white unscarred torso once again. His own smooth hands found Iruka’s unbound hair still alit with electric magic, and he forced them together with brutal, unrestrained power. Old worries about hurting Iruka vanished with the magical liquor flooding his dehydrated veins: now Kakashi only concerned himself with the wild, hot thrashing of his lover and keeping them against each other, their hipbones sharp and naked and pushed together. 

Iruka was so aroused, he was weeping precum everywhere, just like their first time in the studio. Heavy wonder filled Kakashi at the feel of the werewolf’s slick sweat and seed all over his body. Obito’s shut eye radiated memories of warfare, of being blood-drunk, watching dying soldiers drag themselves away pitiful, bleeding, doing whatever they could to survive. The idea was all too familiar now, the feeling of frantic-near-death, the panicked desperation of _wanting this, needing this, please, please, give it to me, **please.**_

Echoes of _Break my heart, Iruka Umino, ruin my life_ overwhelmed him, but Kakashi’s body was barely his own anymore as he grasped and grabbed at the werewolf above him.

There was the sight of Iruka, his dark brown hair undone, his golden eyes like searing sunlight. The man was nearly choking himself downing his own fingers, wetting them so thoroughly that saliva was all about his flushed scarred face. He handled Kakashi’s remorseless brutality without the least bit resistance; he seemed, instead, to enjoy the way he was being captured and held. 

But then Iruka’s fingers were elsewhere, everywhere, flying down the muscles of Kakashi’s abdomen, spreading his bare thighs, pushing upwards and then into him. 

He felt Iruka’s shoulders shudder at the first ever entrance inside him – while Kakashi himself threw back his head so hard at the different, wondrous, wild feeling of being penetrated that the blinding white-and-grey-speckled marble countertop cracked loudly underneath him.

Not that it bothered either of them, not in the slightest.

Iruka was focused now, focused beyond reason. His gold-yellow eyes were narrowed, fixed on Kakashi’s fluctuating expression. The usual blush that the werewolf caused – it was so much worse now, the worst it had ever been, drowning Kakashi in dizzying blood-drunken heat. His fingers stayed on Iruka’s shoulders, feeling out the man’s bones, muscles, fat, nerves, veins. Anatomical books from the eighteenth century whipped through his mind, telling him how Iruka’s body worked, causing him to shift his legs open more in want, want, want for such an astonishing man, creature, werewolf to take him, here, now, please, _please._

He had one leg propped up on the island, and Iruka suddenly seized it, going for the lean muscles of his revealed thigh. Such sharp teeth on such sensitive, untouched skin! Never-ending motion between his thighs, thrusting in and out, in and out, in and out. 

Iruka curved down; his mouth loved his favorite site of worship. The sensation of having the werewolf fuck him with his fingers – and suck him off – with such true genuine abandon...!

No words were thrown about. They were both breathless, panting on and off. Soft wet sounds coming from between them, more from Iruka’s messy immoral adoration of Kakashi’s throbbing cock. His voice gave out, Kakashi was moaning in ways he never had, ever ever ever.

He wasn’t aware of his own hands both forcing Iruka upwards, but Kakashi was still somewhat cognizant, coherent as he declared with delirious, stumbling want, “Please, Iruka, please, now.”

Half-lidded impatient lupine eyes and a beautiful brown scarred human face – it was too much, far too much. 

But then Kakashi got just what he wanted: Iruka sorted them out, put him in the right position, placed their bodies in the correct way for everything to work out perfectly. It was all so good and needed, because Kakashi was losing his very mind, flowing back to and through every blood binge, being washed away by every time, all the times, that Iruka had taken him in so many different other ways. He had to stop grabbing the other man, because he could tell suddenly that he had been breaking bones, making bruises, damaging Iruka’s instantly-healing body. His hands went to the kitchen island, sliding over marble, crunching down on the stone. 

His fingers went in deep to the white-and-grey material; each fingertip pressed several inches into the rock.

“I love you,” Iruka was saying, his breath hot, his dedication raw and reckless. He was leaning down, intent on kissing Kakashi. Even as their mouths came so close together, he was still murmuring, fevered and reverent, “I can’t tell you how much I love you.”

Between forceful hard kisses, Kakashi just barely found the strength to reply.

“I love you, too.”

He’d wanted to say it earlier, before all this commotion with the party, when Iruka had reassured him out of nowhere. He finally did just what he wanted, what he needed –

Just as Iruka pushed inside him for the very first time.

Kakashi felt his brain struggle with the strange experience of being so spoiled, so taken care of by someone who so truly, fully loved him. His demon eye was rapidly doing desperate work, trying to understand where this fit in with everything else that had happened to him over the last three hundred years. There was clinging to the mountainside, both his human eyes wide, watching the tsunami waters recede and feeling the Earth herself settle down once again. The many close calls beside his two friends, evading monsters and lawmen alike, living on the edge of glory, fame, and infamy. The cold shiver of his undead skin during the solar eclipse, the hunger as he weakly wandered the cemetery where his clawed-open coffin rested far behind him. The last time he drank rum, during the Revolution, when he met an immortal man with chains crossing slow and slothful all over his tanned skin, when he swore off human liquor for favor of something more potent, like meeting strangers with lives and deaths just as fascinating as his own. The years of nomadic confusion between wars, reading everything he could, learning so much, but for what, for what, for what.

Above him, on him, Iruka knew none of it – and yet he knew all of it – and he accepted Kakashi for his past, his present, his future – not blindly, but bewilderingly, like a man with nothing to lose and everything to give, and whose cock was just the best damn size and width to hit –

Kakashi seized up: oh, oh, Lord - it had happened, Iruka had found –

Sweating profusely, panting oh so hound-like, his werewolf broke into a wide feral grin at shared realization between them, that he had finally accurately located –

That was it, that was the start and end of it, because, with that discovery, Iruka was so very upsettingly perfect in his thrusts, and Kakashi couldn’t keep his eyes open, either of them. His brain didn’t have the capability of recalling memories in its desire to comprehend the moment. Instead, his body won, just like in his hunger during his drunken sprees both blood and alcohol. 

He gripped the kitchen island so hard on its sides that he cracked two huge handfuls. Throwing the pieces aside, Kakashi was soon clutching at the raw broken edges, not caring how the raw inside crushed and rubbed rough against the palms of his bare hands.

_Iruka was driving into him, filling him, making him whole again._

There was the werewolf’s panting, but he heard himself, too, always so unable to control himself as he neared his final moment of pleasure – and – and –

Kakashi realized neither of them had even been touching his cock, but the angle was so that Iruka’s body had been pressing occasionally against him, far more intimately than their fucking, their lovemaking, and he glanced down where their bodies were connecting, over and over.

As if noticing the same thing at the same time, Iruka swept into action, never ceasing in his delicious, deliberate thrusting into Kakashi, but now his right hand went from Kakashi’s side to his cock, and Iruka used his own sweat to make the stroking sweeter, surer, just so damn sinful.

Too much, far too much!

Or – or – 

Was it enough? No, no - it was –

_It was perfect._

Exactly what he wanted – exactly what he needed -

Kakashi instinctively stretched upward for his beloved, and Iruka met him halfway, their kiss lasting ages and eons and centuries and millennia and all of time, all of human history, all of galactic existence since the Big Bang and then far beyond when the last lifeform faded away.

Days could have passed, even weeks, months, years. Whole wars could have been started, fought, survived, finished with ink on paper, dead men in the ground, empty promises of peace. 

It didn’t matter: now he was here with Iruka Umino, so dangerous, free, dedicated, and _good_.

He woke up on the floor on the kitchen sometime later, feeling sticky, satisfied, and sore. There was broken marble everywhere, not just the two large pieces that he’d broken off but more. The whole island had fallen apart under what Kakashi assumed was his own ferocious strength during the last moments of their lovemaking. He felt rather blasé looking at the destroyed kitchen: his friends could afford a renovation of their private suite, they were consultants to who-knows how many governments and had been alive well over a century. 

Fortunately, there wasn’t blood – not on him, in him, or anywhere. 

It hadn’t quite occurred to Kakashi that Iruka could have bled during their first time… nor had he considered what he might do if that had happened.

Just as he abruptly realized that the werewolf who he was so fascinated and captivated by was _not_ in the kitchen with him –

A howl… long, loud, not so distant.

Kakashi went through the small home, past the ornate living room, the overdone bedroom. Beside the bed, there were enormous French doors with soft white curtains pulled aside. Both were open, showing a delicate stone pathway through Tenzo’s exceptional, curated gardens of blooming dark magenta roses, not native for this environment nor this season. The winding line of stones led to a private sitting area close to the Sardinian sea, the water so very blue under the dazzling Mediterranean sun. He had a vague appreciation for his stark and total nudity as Iruka’s cum wetly trailed down his legs, but he felt remarkably unbothered by it… if not somewhat privately pleased by its presence and the new sensation.

On the very edge of Earth and sea…

There was Iruka Umino, a wolf once more.

He was howling his heart out.

Kakashi leaned against the doorway, crossing his arms, appreciating both the sound and sight. 

_Break my heart, hm…?_

Instead, his chest seemed to be ever so softly burning, as if a flame had been lit deep inside him and was warming up his undead skin, replacing the dead space where his soul had once been.

It felt good. 

_Like nothing I’ve ever experienced before._

For the first time in centuries… Kakashi looked forward to the future.


	20. Chapter 20

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What about that subplot, though?
> 
>  
> 
> ___

“You have a death wish.”

Gai didn’t care where he was, except for one feature: he was under Itachi. The demon had been acting strange all day, even though he’d been pretending otherwise. Nonetheless, Gai easily recognized the difference – he had spent enough time with Kakashi to know when an aloof-acting magical creature was feeling messed-up! 

Certainly Itachi was not in his right mind. Although they had just been at Asuma and Kurenai’s house, when Itachi had reached for him, the world had gone black like a concussion, fuzzy on the edges. There was no way to tell how much time had passed, which made things acutely uncomfortable for Gai, as he took meticulous track of time given his long life and immortality. 

He was instantly aware of two other things: (1) they were on a nearby beach and (2) Itachi looked truly angry with him.

It was easy to recall the times Itachi showed real rage in front of Gai: it amounted to exactly three moments over the last two hundred and fifty years. 

There was the incident where a snide, over-energized bird-youkai made an insulting quip about Sasuke, which had swiftly resulted in a spray of red blood and purple feathers. 

There was the time Itachi had been sent up from Hell to help serve a step in the Apocalypse. Kakashi and Gai purposefully got in his way. The consequential glower was one for the ages, dark and foreboding and full of unending wrath. It hadn’t matter to Kakashi at all; his Eternal Rival had looked quite bored as the three of them fought each other. Kakashi had been the one to end things by pushing Itachi back through the portal to Hell, saying “Shut up, and go home.” Gai especially remembered because he and Kakashi shared ice cream afterwards.

Lastly, there was now, this time. Gai was pressed deeply into pale-tan sand, the sun burning high overhead. Itachi was straddling his hipbones so tightly that Gai could feel them breaking and magically repairing on and off, on and off, on and off, in an ever-repeating cycle.

Itachi’s thin black eyebrows furrowed down into his bright red eyes. His mouth was an even line; he held his shoulders stiff and tense. The demon’s elegant dark suit was disheveled, which was strange, because he should have been able to control its appearance as he always did.

Ultimately, Gai was more concerned with the sword slowly cutting his throat.

It was Itachi’s blade. He knew this particular weapon from outbreaks of violence in Mexico, China, and South Africa when Itachi had appeared beside him. Of course, this was not the first time the demon had put it to Gai’s throat as warning or threat. However, Itachi was holding it more carelessly than ever before. The demon’s fingers kept slipping as if he was dripping sweat. 

Rather than the distant pain of sliced skin and cut-open muscle, Gai was worried about Itachi’s haphazard grip on his sword.

It was so unlike him to be sloppy.

As he observed Itachi’s persistent irritation, Gai refuted his accusation. 

“I do not have a death wish.” 

He was thankful the sword hadn’t dug into his vocal cords so he could respond out loud. Just like his constantly-breaking hipbones, his neck wound was ceaselessly attempting to heal itself. Rather tragically, the unknown magic concoction couldn’t counteract Itachi’s black magic. The blood continued to flow as the injury stayed braced open by the blade.

Although Itachi’s eyes weren’t cruel, invasive, and flying through Gai’s memories, they were still captivating in the Mediterranean sunlight. 

Itachi’s eyes looked like a blood-red sea full of glistening black diamonds. 

He did not seem as fascinated with Gai as he said in a flat, fierce tone, “Tsunade could kill you.” 

That must be the woman who upset Itachi! Well, her bones broke easily. Still, she had smiled in amusement at Gai afterwards. She’d winked at Itachi as she disappeared back into the crowd. 

But before Gai could explain that he didn’t like how Tsunade touched Itachi, the demon leaned forward, causing his sword to push in deeper. On reflex, Gai moved with the weapon, burying further into the sand, even as he decided he would not try to escape the subordinate position. 

“I could kill you.”

Instantly, Gai brought both of his hands to Itachi’s beautifully-imagined trousers. Ignoring the remote signals of distress in his brain, he imploringly looked up at the man and corrected both statements at once by saying, “She cannot. Neither can you.”

Itachi’s expression darkened; he seemed to consider scowling. But then the sword vanished into thin air, leaving the demon’s hands empty. He immediately filled them by putting them both over Gai’s larger, calloused, scarred ones. Sounding like he’d swallowed glass shards, Itachi firmly asserted, insistent on the issue, “You should be afraid of her - and me. You should fear death.”

Oh, but no, Gai didn’t. He really didn’t. He flipped his hands over and entangled their fingers together, trying to transition the demon from unsettled anger to familiar volatile fondness. The wind was wild on this isolated beach; it dried the blood on Gai’s neck in record time. He only registered the difference as he pushed upwards into a sit-up, attempting to get closer to Itachi.

But Itachi’s right hand left his own and pushed him back down in the sand.

Gai submitted without any resistance, but he could feel his eyes shifting to big, broadcast concern.

Itachi’s rage was dissolving. In its wake was something more brittle. The demon – well, he looked a lot like how he did fifty years ago, when blood streamed out of his eyes, and he shakily sought stability with a man he fought more often than not. Just as before, he seemed conflicted in the silence between them. 

Of course, his legs were still continuously shattering Gai’s hipbones, the injury endless and very, very vaguely emanating pain. He had his left hand intertwined with Gai’s in such a casual sweet appreciative way, Gai was immeasurably pleased with the utter perfection of the experience. 

Finally, after either a few seconds or several hours, Itachi’s scarlet eyes rose to stare out at the midnight-blue Mediterranean Sea. 

His voice was nearly lost in the whipping wind as he said ever so softly, “You don’t know me… what I’ve done, what I look like.”

But Gai _did_ know! He’d seen Itachi on countless occasions, ending the lives of evil things, rerouting human history for their continued survival. Without a doubt there had been bad moments, like all the times Gai stopped Kakashi from killing Itachi (which happened so much it had become exhausting, but he kept doing it, like in the schoolyard just a few months ago). He’d put himself between the two on many different occasions (thankfully his scar tissue always faded in time – like the fight where he’d absorbed both Kakashi’s lightning bolt and Itachi’s sword through his sternum – that had been tough one!). 

He knew from Kakashi that Itachi had killed his family, his clan. Drinking champagne with Asuma in Paris after the Great War, he’d learned from the wizard that Itachi kept mostly to himself. Most magical creatures did not like him. Wizards and witches fought each other to get away from him. Nearly everything in existence avoided him, said he was peculiar. He was a fallen angel, not a demon originally borne of darkness. Unlike most inhabitants of Hell, Itachi was not a follower created and sustained by the Devil himself. He had betrayed God at some point; he’d crashed into Earth; he’d gone down into the fires and stayed there. His ventures to the topsoil were all on purpose, but they were almost always _his_ purpose. Simply said, he served strange causes.

Gai absolutely knew what Itachi had done these last twelve years! 

He’d saved the world.

“I know you,” Gai promised, beholding the demon, truly in love.

Itachi’s brilliant red eyes flicked down to him. He said shortly, “You only know this version.”

Great point! Gai held Itachi’s hand tighter as he declared, meaning his words with all his heart, “I want to know every version of you!”

He was admittedly a bit surprised when Itachi shook his head back-and-forth. A bit of old wrath roared back over his expression. The demon effectively denied Gai’s devotion when he refused.

“You will hate me.” 

His hips were broken – actually, they were constantly being broken by Itachi’s thoughtless crushing thighs – so Gai had to be creative – he would be innovative, he would be experimental, _because he accepted the challenge whole-heartedly._

Using his abdominal muscles, Gai swung upwards. He felt his pelvis do what he imagined must have happened in the 1912 sinking of the Titanic – the whole thing breaking in half...! – but it was no matter!

He dragged Itachi down into a kiss, certainly not what the demon had been expecting in his lost, mournful staring out into the sea. The wondrous result was a gasp against his mouth, and a protest of squirming slender shoulders, and then the fever-hot response of being kissing fervently in return. 

Gai ramped up his intensity to its very extreme as he put space between them and exclaimed in his most serious, honest, but demanding voice, “Show me, Itachi! I will accept you no matter what!”

For just a second Itachi’s scarlet eyes spun in shock. He looked close to blinking in surprise – a very human behavior! what was happening to him?? – but the demon seized on the essence of the comment after enduring being shouted at from only a few inches away.

And… 

… wow.

Itachi’s skin became black. Not the soft fuzzy black of cloth. Not the ethereal feel of the night. 

No… Instead it was such non-reflective black, the demon seemed to be two-dimensional and flat. The mighty Italian sun failed to have any impact on Itachi’s new form. His shadow-skin took everything the distant star had to offer, absorbing every last bit of light and letting nothing, not a bit, appear ever again. 

The effect was totally engrossing: Gai stared wide-eyed up at the silhouette of Itachi. He could only make out the outline of the demon’s still-man-shaped figure. There were no details whatsoever, no crease of illusory clothing, no definition of an expression. It seemed far too much like a black hole had transformed into a humanoid and was now resting on top of him.

But then Itachi opened his eyes, and Gai’s jaw dropped open in amazement.

Those scarlet eyes – human-shaped when Itachi kept up his illusion – they were now the shape of oval brilliant cut diamonds, remarkably broad and deep, sunk down into the black. The pair of infinitely complex ruby-red eyes glittering down at Gai made him fully blush in astonishment. 

He had seen the Koh-i-Noor diamond, the finest of the British Crown Jewels, at the Queen’s Coronation in 1902… and now he wondered if the cut and style of the famous gemstone was based on demon eyes.

As soon as he came to understand _these_ were Itachi’s real eyes, the demon shifted backward, an action only recognizable by the changing pressure on Gai’s broken-and-still-breaking hipbones.

Suddenly there were new additions to Itachi’s outline. There were spiraling horns that went from the front-side of Itachi’s face then far back beyond the rest of his body. The horns spiraled as they traveled outwards: they were instantaneously identifiable as greater kudu horns, the large sturdy antelope of the eastern and southern parts of Africa. They were immense and intimidating; Gai immediately wondered if Itachi had ever literally locked horns with another demon.

But he had little time to think about it, because Itachi more distinctly shook his head, and –

Two distinctive sets of wings blew outward from the black silhouette of his demon body. The upper pair were based on those of a bat from the look of their outline, the bony-looking digit protruding at the wing’s middle. They reached out incredibly far, taking up much of Gai’s view of the shoreline, shading the stretch of pale sand dunes a disturbingly dense black.

Just underneath them… those were the remains of angel wings, they had to be. They were not as large as the first pair but still bewilderingly sized, easily six feet in length as they fluttered outward. Unlike the bat wings, the dark remnants of Itachi’s angel wings were much more pronounced, many different feather tips at their ends like a thousand sharp unique points. 

Just like the rest of his body, Itachi’s huge bird-styled wings were made of endless, empty blackness. 

Everything except his red-gemstone eyes.

Above him, Itachi was watching him; he was bearing witness to Gai’s reaction to him.

The transformation was genuinely astonishing, and that meant something! Gai had seen entire kingdoms and nations collapse; he’d saved people from the claws of genocide. He’d been to the top of every mountain on Earth, every single one of them; he’d ventured to the planet’s center through magically-enforced tunnels and marveled at the skeletal civilizations down there. He’d seen Kakashi struck by lightning, destroy concrete fortresses, rip men’s limbs off one-by-one, bite a woman’s throat with such desperate need he went through her skin, muscle, bone, into the porcelain tub behind her, breaking the antique into a million shards, cutting her naked figure into tatters of flesh and splattered blood. He’d had to kill youkai of all kinds, messy, inglorious, and spraying him with magic and fire; he’d forcibly embraced a werewolf so hard that he’d felt her supernaturally-advanced spine instantly separate into several individual vertebrae. 

He’d watched his first wife die so slowly… he understood his curse for the first time.

Her final breaths were agony for both of them.

She looked up at Gai in pain, hoping he could help her.

He could not. She died. They all died.

Gai reached up towards Itachi. He pulled the demon down to him. 

He couldn’t see Itachi’s hidden expression… just his glittering-glistening eyes… his scarlet-ruby eyes… his royal-diamond eyes.

The demon apparently did have lips in this form; Gai found that out as he kissed his ninth precious person. His right hand went back towards Itachi’s horns, feeling them out, tracing the spirals going high towards Heaven. His left hand dropped down, sliding between the demonic and angelic wings on Itachi’s right side, trailing over the thin membrane of the upper pair, discovering the soft details of the feathers in the lower set.

Itachi kissed him back with uninhibited force.

He only remembered they were on a beach – and that Itachi was breaking his bones – when the demon pulled back from him, burnt Gai’s clothes off his body with magic, adjusted Gai’s abruptly-healed legs upward, and then pressed down against him, forcing Gai further into the fine-grained sand.

Itachi’s intention was obvious, but he wasn’t a monster, even now.

His radiant eyes seemed to beg Gai. 

Yes. 

Oh, yes. 

Gai remembered when he lost his virginity, after he married his first wife. He was already an immortal. She was young, and strangely he was as well. They were both so inexperienced; he was clumsy, too big in every way. She winced, she wept. He held her; he wondered if it would get better. 

It did. It took time and patience, but it did.

The same thing was happening again – except now it was Gai wincing and weeping, and Itachi was holding him with infinite-dark arms, four massive wings wild and untamed behind him. 

But he found balance much more quickly with Itachi than with any of his other lovers.

Maybe it was because Itachi was a demon, a fallen angel, a recluse with too much knowledge. It was as if there were only a few fleeting moments of immense insane distress. Then there was something else entirely, the exact opposite feeling. The sensation threw Gai so crazily it was like he’d been blown out of a cannon, soaring through the smoke-filled air across a raging battlefield, crashing hard into enemy lines, destroying them, filling him with victory and pure satisfaction.

He heard himself making sounds at every one of Itachi’s thrusts. They were brutal, remorseless, but also somehow perfectly focused on Gai’s pleasure, to the point Gai knew he’d already come once – and then twice – and then again – and Itachi was _still_ entering him, moving them both backward into the sand, bringing them closer and closer to the blue sea and its wintry-cold depths.

His hands were everywhere on Itachi’s real form; he dug into the black, got fistfuls of it. He held onto each of the four wings, sometimes at the same time. He had a ruthless grip on one of Itachi’s horns, forcing the demon far to the right, only radically speeding up Itachi’s sexual mastering of Gai’s cursed immortal body.

He couldn’t remember the last time he blacked out, but he must have done just that. 

Gai woke up to Itachi sheltering him on the beach. An enormous demon wing and smaller ruined angel wing hung over him like an ideologically-complex black-magic umbrella. 

Itachi had carefully placed Gai’s slightly sore, somewhat exhausted body – it was still trying to catch up and heal everything – on his bare lap. He was absent-mindedly playing with strands of Gai’s bowl-cut hair as he gazed out at the setting sun, the clear skies burning bright orange.

“Itachi,” he managed to say. Oh… his voice hurt. _It actually hurt._ This wasn’t the sort of pain he perpetually put aside. He must have truly strained his vocal cords and lungs during their lovemaking.

The demon’s fractural-ruby eyes met his. Gai slid a hand over Itachi’s pitch-black cheek.

All of a sudden, Itachi resumed his human illusion. 

They shared a gentle kiss as the sun set on the horizon. As Gai began to profess both his eternal love and his acceptance of his ninth person –

“We should go back to the party. Kakashi and I need to talk.”

It was impossible not to gawk up at Itachi: Gai did just that, looking at him incredulously. 

Completely unmoved by Gai’s startled look, the illusory version of Itachi did perhaps the most unbelievable thing during the entire encounter.

He smiled and said, his tone warm and familiar, “Your Eternal Rival has finally realized his fate.”


End file.
